The five beautiful Granville sisters - Rosie, Juliet, Louise, Amanda and Charlotte - enjoy a life of aristocratic privilege in the 1930s in Mayfair. Rosie and Juliet are deadly rivals and when Rosie falls in love with a marquess, Juliet steals him from her, only to dump him later. Juliet goes on to marry the wealthy Duke of Kincardine, but when he turns out to be homosexual, only interested in being given an heir, she leaves him. When World War II is declared, the love lives of the Granville girls are struck with a fatal blow. The man Rosie went on to marry is killed during the Blitz. Then Lousie falls in love with Jack, a sixteen-year-old evacuee from the slums of London. When she falls pregnant, the family is devastated and she is sent to Wales in disgrace. Amanda has turned out to be left-wing, despising everything the Granvilles stand for. The girls' mother, Liza, is distraught that all her plans for her daughters have gone wrong. She can only pin her hopes on Charlotte now...