Alan MacNaughtan

David Powlett-Jones, a young Welshman, returns from the trenches of World War I disillusioned and suffering from shellshock. Accepted as a teacher at an elite boys boarding school, David fears he won't last. Luckily, the faith of the headmaster who hired him proves well-founded. Over the course of his 20-year rise through the ranks of the school, he finds and loses love with several women.

As rival superpowers compete to dominate, one small group of elite spies is the only thing keeping the world from sliding into Cold War chaos. They are the Sandbaggers, a covert team of British Secret Intelligence agents so highly skilled and so ruthless that they take on the ultra-dangerous assignments nobody else can handle. Whether stealing sensitive documents from deep with bureaucratic strongholds, spiriting key defectors from locked-down locations,...