Separate Tables is the collective name of two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan, both taking place in the Beauregard Private Hotel, Bournemouth, a town on the south seacoast of England. The first play, entitled Table by the Window, focuses on the troubled relationship between a disgraced Labour politician and his ex-wife. The second play, Table Number Seven, is set about eighteen months after the events of the previous play, and deals with the touching friendship between a repressed spinster and a kindly but bogus man posing as an upper-class retired army officer, Major Pollock. The two principal roles in both plays are written to be played by the same performers. The secondary characters – permanent residents, the hotel's manager, and members of the staff – appear in both plays. The plays are about people who are driven by loneliness into a state of desperation.