These two plays are set in a shabby genteel hotel on England's south coast. Except for the two leads in each (which may be doubled) the same characters appear in both. In Table by the Window, a down-at-the-heels journalist is confronted by his ex-wife, a former model who provoked him to the violent act that sent him to prison, destroying his future. Still in love, they nevertheless go through another terrible scene and it is the hotel manager, Miss Cooper, who helps repair their broken lives. In Table Number Seven, a 'self-made' army colonel without any true background and education to which he lays claim, finds solace with a spinster over the objections of her ruthless, domineering mother. When a sordid scandal threatens to drive them apart, Miss Cooper again comes to the rescue.
A historical note: in the second play in the collection, the phony Major Pollock attempts to conceal from fellow guests a report in the local paper of his sexual harassment of women at a local cinema. Rattigan wrote an alternative version in which it is revealed the major was a homosexual thus insinuating the major was pursuing illicit sex not with women but with other men in that local Bournemouth cinema. Critical opinion argues that Rattigan was a victim of 1950s repressiveness, and so the sexual incident in this published version of the play was as good a handling of sexual abnormality as English playgoers in the 50s would tolerate. Scholars believe that the formal restrictions of the time gave way to brilliantly discreet metaphor.