On a rainy Sunday afternoon, Mrs Palfrey, recently widowed, arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are a mixed bunch - magnificently flawed and eccentric - living off crumbs of affection and an obsessive interest in the relentless round of hotel meals. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper. And then one day, Mrs Palfrey encounters the hadsome young writer Ludo, and an unlikely friendship is formed . . .