While most of Tilling thrills to Lucia's artistic accomplishments, Mapp is convinced that her summer visitor is a crashing fraud and sets out to prove it with her usual vigour. Lucia repels an early attack on her musical talent with ease and judicious use of the easier movements of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and Mapp is forced to open a new front with an all-out assault on her linguistic ability. Suspecting that her tenant's grasp of Italian is limited to the few phrases she may have picked up from occasional trips to the opera, Mapp thrills to the news that Tilling is to be visited by a genuine Italian contessa. This surely will call Lucia's bluff. And when Lucia goes down with a bout of influenza on the very day of the contessa's arrival, all of Mapp's suspicions seem justified...

The Tilling Summer Exhibition provides Lucia with a new battlefield to conquer. With pencils sharpened and easels at the ready, she and Georgie prepare to amaze their new friends with their artistic ability, whatever lengths they have to go to for success. Their triumphs leave Mapp gnashing her teeth with fury until an exotic visitor passing through Tilling provides her with an opportunity to start a new trend. Lucia may have won the artistic heart of Tilling, but Mapp will fight back for their souls and waistlines. Only Georgie's frightful sisters, it seems, can rain on her parade.

It is 1930 and in the quaint Queen Anne village of Tilling (which is by, but not quite on, the sea) all seems as quiet as a mill pond. But its eccentric inhabitants exist in a world seething with gossip, faddishness and petty one-upmanship. From her centrally located house, Mallards, Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over them all. Until, that is, the arrival of Mrs Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas. With her passion for music, art and high culture of all kinds, Lucia is quite an addition to Tilling's social scene. It's not long before Mapp is indulging in all kinds of foul plots to undermine her accomplished tenant.