December 1952. As preparations begin for the royal Christmas at Sandringham House in Norfolk, old friends --- Jack Devereux and Olive Carter --- are unexpectedly reunited by the occasion. Olive, a single mother and aspiring reporter at the BBC, leaps at the opportunity to cover the holiday celebration, but even a chance encounter with the queen doesn’t go as planned. Jack, a recently widowed chef, reluctantly takes up a new role in the royal kitchens at Sandringham. Lacking in purpose and direction, Jack has abandoned his dream to have his own restaurant, but his talents are soon noticed and while he might not believe in himself, others do. As Jack and Olive’s paths continue to cross over the following five Christmases, they grow ever closer. Yet Olive carries the burden of a heavy secret that threatens to destroy everything.

1940, Kent: As the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice King she’d long forgotten. She finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher --- to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas. 1940, London: Lily Nicols’ humble home is her world until war tears everything asunder. She is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme. When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other, will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.

When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn that their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfill her last wish: to travel across Europe together. They are to deliver three letters, in which Violet will say goodbye to those she hasn’t seen since traveling to Europe 40 years earlier. Clara sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it’s also a chance to embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions to report on the growing threat of Hitler’s Nazi party and Mussolini’s control in Italy. A shocking truth about their family brings the sisters closer together, but as they reach Vienna to deliver the final letter, old grudges threaten their reconciliation again.

China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth and those in her charge. Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status. But when Japan declares war on Britain and America, Japanese forces take control of the school, and the security and comforts Nancy and her friends are used to are replaced by privation, uncertainty and fear. Now the enemy, and separated from their parents, the children look to their teachers to provide a sense of unity and safety.

When struggling perfumer Sophie Duval shelters Grace Kelly in her boutique to fend off a persistent British press photographer, James Henderson, a bond is forged between the two women and sets in motion a chain of events that stretches across 30 years of friendship, love and tragedy. James cannot forget his brief encounter with Sophie. Despite his guilt at being away from his daughter, he takes an assignment to cover the wedding of the century. In Monaco, as wedding fever soars and passions and tempers escalate, James and Sophie --- like Princess Grace --- ultimately must decide what they are prepared to give up for love.

1838: Northumberland, England. Longstone Lighthouse has been Grace Darling’s home for all of her 22 years. When she and her father rescue shipwreck survivors in a furious storm, Grace becomes celebrated throughout England. But far more precious than her unsought fame is the friendship that develops between Grace and visiting artist George Emmerson. 1938: Newport, Rhode Island. A pregnant Matilda Emmerson has been sent away from Ireland in disgrace. She is to stay with Harriet, a reclusive relative and assistant lighthouse keeper, until her baby is born. A discarded, half-finished portrait opens a window into Matilda’s family history. As a deadly hurricane approaches, two women --- living a century apart --- will be linked forever by their instinctive acts of courage and love.

August 1914. England is at war. As Evie Elliott watches her brother, Will, and his best friend, Thomas Harding, depart for the front, she believes that it will be over by Christmas. But Evie and Thomas experience a very different war. Frustrated by life as a privileged young lady, Evie longs to play a greater part in the conflict, and as Thomas struggles with the unimaginable realities of war, he also faces personal battles back home where War Office regulations on press reporting cause trouble at his father’s newspaper business. Through their letters, Evie and Thomas share their greatest hopes and fears --- and grow ever fonder from afar. Can love flourish amid the horror of the First World War, or will fate intervene?

1917. Two young cousins, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, claim to have photographed fairies at the bottom of the garden. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle becomes convinced of the photographs’ authenticity, the girls become a national sensation. Frances and Elsie will hide their secret for many decades, but Frances longs for the truth to be told. One hundred years later. When Olivia Kavanagh finds an old manuscript in her late grandfather’s bookshop, she becomes fascinated by the story it tells of two young girls who mystified the world. But it is the discovery of an old photograph that leads her to realize how the fairy girls’ lives intertwine with hers, blurring her understanding of what is real and what is imagined.

November 11, 1918. In the aftermath of World War I, soldiers, loved ones and survivors await the years ahead with hope, even as their hearts are marked by all those who have been lost. As families come back together, lovers reunite and strangers take solace in each other, everyone has a story to tell.

For years, Mr. Shaw’s Home for Watercress and Flower Girls has cared for London’s flower girls --- orphaned and crippled children living on the streets and selling posies of violets and watercress to survive. Assistant housemother Tilly Harper discovers a diary written by an orphan named Florrie, who died of a broken heart after she and her sister, Rosie, were separated. Moved by Florrie’s pain and all she endured in her brief life, Tilly sets out to discover what happened to Rosie.