TELLING TALES is about the failing marriage of an industrialist and his wife, about the industrialist's wish to sell his company to a colleague, Paul Roberts, and about the terminally ill wife of Paul, Ingrid. It is also about the shop steward organising a strike at Paul's factory that jeopardises the deal with the industrialist, and about the wife of the shop steward, who happens to clean and cook for the industrialist. A network of intertwined tales told in different ways, and for very different motives, by the main protagonists.

Kate works in the nuclear industry. She is concerned about the way things are being run. So she smuggles out some Plutonium to prove how easy it is. She tries to pass it on to protest groups, but nobody is interested as they have their own agendas.

John Fothergill, aesthete and scholar, becomes the proprietor of the Spread Eagle, in Thame, Oxfordshire, with the intent of turning it into the most celebrated Inn in England, catering to the brightest lights in London's literati.

Young Mr. Wignall is on a business trip to northern England. He is keen to pull some local girls while there. His unassuming boss, meanwhile, has organised his calendar to meet with a different lady each day he is there.