Set in the late Victorian era, Ursula Brangwen, Sammi Davis, is the eldest child of Will Brangwen and his wife Anna Brangwen, a prosperous Derbyshire farmer family. Her world is defined by a steady country life and a childhood wonder for rainbows. Since the age of three, Ursula has chased those arcing colors, and after a particularly rainy spell she even collects a suitcase and heads out, hoping to find a pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. To calm her imagination, Will Brangwen, Christopher Gable, tries to dazzle her with a practical gesture—a jam sandwich layered with several spreads of different flavours that resemble a rainbow, a small act meant to tether fantasy to family routine. Anna Brangwen, Glenda Jackson, watches with a mix of love and concern as her daughter’s mind wanders beyond the hedges of the family land.
As Ursula grows into her teenage years, her curiosity expands in two directions that feel both intimate and forbidden. She falls into a same‑sex romance with Winifred Inger, her older swimming and gym teacher, while simultaneously developing strong feelings for Anton Skrebensky, a student from the nearby boys’ high school who plans to enlist after graduation. The pairings pull Ursula into hidden corners of affection and risk. She and Winifred steal weekends together at Winifred’s home and share long walks in the hills, a gentle rebellion against the strict mores of their time. Winifred even introduces Ursula to an artist friend who invites her to model nude; Ursula refuses the implied proposition, and the artist cuts the encounter short, but the sting lingers.
When Ursula visits Winifred alongside her own family, she meets Uncle Henry, a wealthy relative who is captivated by Winifred. Uncle Henry, David Hemmings, soon courts the woman, and after a brief engagement she agrees to marry him. This development awakens a ache of jealousy in Ursula, who finds herself torn between affection for her mentor and a longing for a different path she cannot yet name.
The wedding of Winifred to Uncle Henry coincides with a turning point for Ursula: the end of her romance with Winifred and the departure of Anton to fight in the Second Boer War in South Africa. Choosing to rebuild her life, Ursula leaves the countryside behind and becomes a schoolteacher. She moves to London, taking a position at a cramped, underfunded East End elementary school where discipline, hygiene, and poverty are daily challenges. The headmaster’s crude advances test her resolve, but she holds back at first, refusing to mirror the cruelty that surrounds her. Yet a belligerent boy wearing a sling-shot begins pestering her, and in a moment of loss of control, she disciplines him with a cane in full view of the class. The act quiets the classroom and halts the harassment, yet she is left guilt‑ridden by the violence of her outburst and ultimately resigns at the end of the school year.
A year and a half later, Ursula returns to her family farm with a newly restless sense of purpose. Anton has returned from war but has found another life; he is back for a time and proposes a rekindled romance, though Ursula’s heart is no longer tethered to a single course. After a brief, casual reunion with Winifred—who is now married to Uncle Henry and raising a child—Ursula makes a radical choice: she will chart her own path. She commits to helping others, joining a local miners’ union to advocate for better wages and security for underprivileged workers, and she begins to imagine a life defined by service rather than convention.
The relationship with Anton evolves into a complicated strand of independence and risk. When Ursula suspects she might be pregnant, Anton proposes marriage, but she declines, determined to pursue her own trajectory even if that means being alone. Her decision is tested further when she learns that she is not pregnant after all and that Anton has left for India with another woman.
The world reinforces her resolve to choose her own future. A heartfelt talk with her father solidifies the sense that life’s path is not fixed, but made through courage and action. In the spring of 1901 she sets out again—this time to teach in a new town, two hours away from home. The final image is a hopeful mirror of her childhood: Ursula packs a suitcase and, as a rainbow finally arcs across the rain-soaked sky, she runs toward it, chasing a possibility she has chosen for herself.
This portrait of Ursula Brangwen’s life unfolds with quiet dignity, tracing a girl’s awakening to adulthood against a backdrop of social change, familial love, and the stubborn pull of personal independence. It is a narrative about longing, consequence, and the enduring search for a path that aligns with one’s own sense of purpose, even as the world around her shifts beneath her feet.
