A Scottish civil servant (Stanley Baxter) must learn how to drive a Bentley to impress his girlfriend’s (Julie Christie) tycoon father (James Robertson Justice).

In pre-WW1 England, a youngster is expelled from a naval academy over a petty theft, but his parents raise a political furor by demanding a trial.

When ship’s fireman Peter McCabe walks out on his long-suffering wife, he leaves her impoverished, with two young daughters and a boy born soon after his departure. After an absence…