It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

Adapted from a Novokshenov novel this semi-ethnographic, semi-polemical epic follows a Mongol uprising against British occupiers not long after the communist revolution in Russia. When a young herdsman is captured by the British a twist of fate leads them to believe he is a descendant of Genghis Khan and, hoping that such a presence will pacify the people, he is dully installed as a puppet leader. This as you might expect turns out to be a terrible error of judgement on the part of the interlope find out more...