Formidable Miss Doggett fills her life by giving tea parties to young academics and acting as watchdog for the morals of North Oxford. Anthea, her great niece, is in love with a dashing upper-class undergraduate with political ambitions. Of this, Miss Doggett thoroughly approves. Anthea's father, however, an Oxford don, is tired of his marriage and is carrying on in the most unseemly fashion with his student Barbara Bird - they have been spotted alone together at the British Museum! Miss Doggett isn't aware, though, that under her very own roof the lodging curate has proposed to her paid companion Miss Morrow. She wouldn't approve at all.