Noël Coward is at his most unashamedly jingoistic with this triple-Oscar winning depiction of the lives and loves, trials and tribulations of the well-to-do "Marryot" family - "Jane" (Diana Wynyard) and husband "Robert" (Clive Brook) and of the working class "Bridges" - Herbert Mundin ("Fred") and Una O'Connor ("Ellen") and their respective children. This episodically styled melodrama, for that is largely what it is, straddles the periods of British history from the late 1800s, through the fairly seismic death of Queen Victoria, the ensuing gentile Edwardian era until the clouds of war gather ...