The World of Downton Abbey

A companion book to the popular British series about the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants offers insights into the story and characters and background information on British society in the early years of the twentieth century.

The inside track on all aspects of the making of award-winning drama, Downton Abbey.

What goes on behind-the-scenes to get the manners of 1900s Britain exactly right on Downton Abbey? Discover the secrets of how the aristocratic set dined and dressed, how they married and made money, how they interacted with the servants, and above all why they behaved as they did. Includes revealing interviews with leading cast members.

The first official cookbook from the Downton Abbey series, timed to coincide with the release of the Downton Abbey movie in September 2019, presents more than 100 recipes that showcase the intrinsic role of food in the Crawley household.

Set in an Edwardian country house in 1912, Downton Abbey portrays the lives of the Crawley family and the servants who work for them. In the drawing rooms, library, and beautiful bedrooms, with their tall windows looking across the park, lives the family, but below stairs are other residents, the servants, as fiercely possessive of their ranks as anyone above.

"They were the super rich of their times, pampered beyond belief - the early 20th-century Edwardian gentry, who lived like superstars, their every desire or need catered to by an army of butlers, servants, footmen, housekeepers and grooms. Class, money, inheritance, luxury and snobbery dominated every aspect of the lives of the upper-crust Edwardian family. Below stairs the staff inhabited a completely different world, their very dependent on servicing...

"A product of Anglo-American capitalism, built by a generation that had never known trauma and was bored by its own prosperity and success, the Titanic set sail into a world that was about to change forever. Modernity was shaking the class system, the Industrial Revolution was creating new kinds of wealth, and revolutionary fervor would lead to The Great War. Exploring the infamous disaster from the perspectives of six of her first-class passengers--a...

"This beautifully illustrated book takes readers on a guided tour of a single day in an upper-crust English home of the Edwardian era. Starting with the servants hard at work while the family is still abed, and culminating in a lavish dinner party, Upstairs & Downstairs lifts the curtain on this fascinating period, as well as its historical bookends, the Victorian and post-World War I eras. Includes accounts from actual masters and servants, along...

A compassionate and discerning exploration of the complex relationship between the server, the served, and the world they lived in, Servants opens a window onto British society from the Edwardian period to the present.