On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel, where she will spend the rest of her days. Her fellow residents, magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, live 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 handsome young writer, Ludo, and learns that even the old can fall in love.