When Covid-19 hit the UK and lockdown was declared, Mike Matthews wondered how his four-star hotel would survive. Then the council called. The British government had launched a program called ‘ Everyone In ’ and 33 rough sleepers – many of whom had spent decades on the street – needed beds. The Prince Rupert Hotel would go on to welcome well over 100 people from this community, offering them shelter, good food, and a comfy bed during the pandemic.

This is the story of how that luxury hotel spent months locked down with their new guests, many of them traumatized, addicts, or suffering from mental illness. As a world-leading foreign correspondent turning her attention to her own country for the first time, Christina Lamb chronicles how extreme situations were handled and how shocking losses were suffered, how romances emerged between guests, and how people grappled with their pasts together.

Unexpected and profound, heart-warming and heartbreaking, this is a tale that gives a panoramic insight into modern Britain in all its failures, and people in all their capacities for kindness – even in the most difficult of times.