''Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece'' - Robert McCrum, Guardian, ''The Best 100 Novels''''An author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth'' - SARAH WATERS ''Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabath Bowen - soul-sisters all'' ANNE TYLEROn a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining daysHer fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper.Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who sees her as inspiration for his novel.''Elizabeth Taylor''s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . Much of the reader''s joy lies in the e