James Clavell, "shōgun"

Put a fence in front of these men… and they'll climb it! - In 1943, the Germans opened Stalag Luft III, a maximum-security prisoner-of-war camp

Engineer Mark Thackeray arrives to teach a totally undisciplined class at an East End school. Still hoping for a good engineering job, he's hopeful that he won't be there long. He starts implementing his own brand of classroom discipline: forcing the pupils to treat each other with respect. Inevitably he begins getting involved in the students' personal lives, and must avoid the advances of an amorous student while winning over the class tough. What will he decide when the engineering job comes through?

Tai-Pan is Chinese for "supreme leader". This is the man with real power to his hands. And such a Tai-Pan is Dirk Struan who is obsessed by his plan to make Hong Kong the "jewel in the crown of her British Majesty". In 1841 he achieves his goal but he has many enemies who try to destroy his plans. Will they succeed?

Adapted from a novel by J.B. Pick set in the period of the Thirty Years War, the story concerns two men who come to an as yet untouched valley (hence "last valley") seeking refuge from the religious conflicts of the period. One of them, Vogel (Omar Sharif), is that rarest of people in his time period, someone who is neither a peasant nor a nobleman. The other is a mercenary army leader (Michael Caine) encouraged by Vogel to winter over in the valley before resuming his participation in the overall armed conflict. The refuge they seek is disturbed, however, as the seeds of the warfare outside the valley are also present in it and romantic and religious tensions of all kinds develop among the local inhabitants.