Ten strangers, drawn away from their normal lives to an isolated rock off the Devon coast. But as the mismatched group waits for the arrival of the hosts — the improbably named Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen — the weather sours and they find themselves cut off from civilization. Very soon, the guests, each struggling with their conscience, will start to die — one by one, according to the rules of the nursery rhyme ‘Ten Little Soldier Boys’ — a rhyme that hangs in every room of the house and ends with the most terrifying words of all: ‘… and then there were none.

The story of Queen Victoria, who came to the throne at a time of great economic turbulence and resurgent republicanism – and died 64 years later the head of the largest empire the world had ever seen, having revitalised the throne’s public image and become “grandmother of Europe”.

Britain is in the grip of a chilling recession… falling wages, rising prices, civil unrest – only the bankers are smiling. It’s 1783 and Ross Poldark returns from the American War of Independence to his beloved Cornwall to find his world in ruins: his father dead, the family mine long since closed, his house wrecked and his sweetheart pledged to marry his cousin. But Ross finds that hope and love can be found when you are least expecting it in the wild but beautiful Cornish landscape.