Born in the year 1791, William Neal, a poor ploughboy living in the Scottish borders has to watch as his siblings, mother and father all die while being exploited by the wastrel third Earl of Brackenholm, His only comfort is an ability to read his bible. Bravely, he runs away from Brackenholm at 15 years old. His destination? London.

During the toughest journey of his life, as William makes his way south, he encounters people from all walks of life as he goes. He experienced many hardships on his journey and finally reached Paddington Canal Basin. Little did he know these experiences would help him develop a life he would have never thought possible in England’s capital.

Finding a friend in a street urchin, Bill Bow, William is forced to steal food just to survive until one day he makes a fateful decision that will change the course of his life forever. By a lucky coincidence, he is offered a job, an employer, and the chance to better himself as a printer. Friendships, love, a home and marriage all follow. Against all odds, William gets to experience success and happiness.

William Neal’s life in London looks is very different now to the life he was born into. It is 1817 and he is happily married to the love of his life, Charlotte. The couple are enjoying married life immensely in their fashionable Shoreditch home. William and his business partner George Fenwick continue to run their successful printing business, and Charlotte takes over running the sales department. All seems well but tragedy is just around the corner.

They are keen to start a family but Charlotte suffers a devastating miscarriage. Several years later when they do eventually have a baby, Robert, it is not the end of the couple’s suffering. They enjoy watching Robert grow up together, but when the boy turns 16 Charlotte becomes desperately ill. William watches in horror as his wife dies while Robert is away at boarding school. Later another chance meeting gives William the means to exact a terrible revenge back in the Scottish borders.

The years pass and the Neal family grows – but the road is far from smooth. Betrayal love and family drama ensues. Robert Neal is very different to his father and ends up married to an aristocratic wife who pulls strings so he can take up the role of MP. They have two children, William and Robert, but relations sour between Robert and his father when the young man falls in love with a servant. As a result, his father disinherits him. He is excluded from the family but thankfully his grandfather William Neal, the former ploughboy, had provided for him in his will.

Set against the backdrop of two World Wars, the Neal family overcome yet more hardships. They face death, grief and heartbreak – but show extreme bravery and humanity too.

Robert Neal, now a successful surgeon in Nottingham and his wife Hannah are an impressive couple. He is the inventor of a unique method to screen casualties and she a suffragist campaigning for women’s rights. But their lives are cut short. Hannah dies tragically of pancreatic cancer in 1913, and Robert lives through the Great War. Exhausted by his war work, he is struck down by the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919.

The subsequent years follow the trials and tribulations of the next generations of Neals. Daughter Charlotte follows in her mother’s footsteps, becoming a suffragette, but believes violent methods are the only way to achieve change, while her twin brother joins the fighting in the Great War and is killed on the front line in 1916. Hannah marries a soldier she meets while working as a nurse and the couple have two children, but lose their father, a Royal Air Force pilot, when he is killed in an unexplained plane crash in the 1920’s.

After moving to London, Hannah and her daughter are killed in a Blitz bombing, while Hannah’s son, Robert, dies in action after training as a commando, but not before fathering an illegitimate child, James McVitie. James, who has trained as a surgeon in Edinburgh, is now a Consultant, but his decision to bend the rules then lie changes not only his life but that of his wife Fiona and daughters Clare and Chloë forever.

After training as a surgeon in Edinburgh, James McVitie takes up a role as a senior consultant at Easthampton Hospital. Disaster strikes when a mistake he makes has fatal consequences and that, combined with trying to cover up with lies, leads to his name being struck off the medical register.

When he is forced to tell his wife that their comfortable lifestyle is over, she tells him she knows about his affairs and demands a divorce. An acrimonious divorce follows as the couple battle over money and access to their daughters – and court appearances have a terrible impact on the two young girls.

Clare and Chloë may be sisters but are worlds apart. One outgoing, the other very shy, they follow different paths in life. Abandoning school, one leaves home as soon as she can. The other decides she wants to become a doctor, until a chance encounter with her father gives him another dilemma.