John Moulder-Brown

Newly employed at a run-down London swimming baths, Mike (John Moulder-Brown) obsesses after his sassy and self-assured co-worker (Jane Asher, who earned a BAFTA nomination for her role) whilst collecting tips for the 'special services' he is expected to perform for clients (including Diana Dors).

As the plague runs rampant throughout the countryside, a quarantined village is visited by a traveling circus, and children begin to disappear.

Both poetic and polemical, Doris Lessing exploded onto the literary scene with her first novel in 1950. Set in her native Rhodesia, it boldly lifted the lid on themes of psychology, racism, feminism and colonialism.