At the age of forty Dame Margot Fonteyn is considered to be past her best as a prima ballerina and Ninette de Valois is reducing her roles at the Royal Ballet. Then the exciting young Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a recent defector to the West, comes into her life and her bed and revitalizes her career. Frederick Aashton creates a new ballet for them and they become the golden couple of the ballet world. However, Margot is married to Roberto 'Tito' Arias, a Panamanian politician of dubious repute who is not sympathetic to her calling and is probably faithless. When he is shot and paralyzed for life Margot must carry on dancing well into her sixties in order to pay for his costly treatment though she still collaborates with Rudolf in the occasional ballet.

After Frances's seemingly happy San Francisco marriage ends abruptly, she goes into a funk. Urged by her friends to move on, she joins a bus tour of Tuscany where, on the spur of the moment, she buys a crumbling villa. She assembles a crew of oddballs and immigrants to repair the house; over the next year, as they work, she welcomes one of her New York friends who's pregnant and at loose ends, and she seeks love, first (tenuously) with her married real estate agent, then with a charming stranger. Although life gets in the way of love, Frances's wishes come true in unexpected ways, and there's always the Tuscan sun.

A young boy dies from a stray bullet during a shootout between a cop and mob family member who had previously been supiciously given probabtion, only to break its terms. New York's Deputy Mayor, Kevin Calhoun starts digging for information.

In 1931 budding author Christopher Isherwood goes to Berlin at the invitation of his friend W. H. Auden for the gay sex that abounds in the city. Whilst working as an English teacher his housemates include bewigged old queen Gerald Hamilton and would-be actress Jean Ross,who sings tunelessly in a seedy cabaret club. They and others he meets get put into his stories. After a fling with sexy rent boy Caspar he falls for street sweeper Heinz,paying medical bills for the boy's sickly mother, to the disapproval of her other son,Nazi Gerhardt. With Fascism rapidly rising Christopher returns to London with Heinz but is unable to prevent his return to Germany when his visa expires. Years later Christopher,now a successful writer,returns to Berlin for a final meeting with Heinz,now married with children.