It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

Loosely based around the actress Felicity Kendal's childhood in India, we follow her family's Shakespearian theatre group as they travel the country performing to an ever dwindling audience, the terminal victims of a burgeoning Bollywood. Shakespeare Wallah is one of the earliest Merchant Ivory films and is a delicate, intimate portrait of colonial demise and Indian self assertion. find out more...