Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over the village of Tilling...until the advent of Mrs Emmeline Lucas, or "Lucia" to her friends. No one could compete, surely, with Lucia"s formidable armoury: her duchesses, her Italian, her financial speculations, her celebrated recipe for Lobster a la Riseholme. But Mapp will not relinquish her supremacy in local society so easily, and battle is joined between these two indomitable queens and their rather fickle allies.