Blog

I’m on the Nancy Astor Express. We’re whizzing west out of Paddington station; west through Reading, Exeter and Newton Abbott, to the unveiling of a statue in Plymouth, Devon. On the train with me are Astors, female MPs, 50:50 campaigners, sculptors and donors. We’re excited. This is a crowd-funded statue, and we’ve all played aRead more

Victorian campaigner Emily Williamson was so incensed by the millinery trade’s use of plumage that she invited her friends to tea – and persuaded them to sign a pledge to wear no feathers. The all-female group called itself the Society for the Protection of Birds – ‘a very ambitious title’, noted The Times, under theRead more

Uneasy mingling: the Servants’ Ball at ITV’s Downton Abbey, where Lady Grantham rightly couples Carson, the butler – and Lord Grantham escorts housekeeper Mrs Hughes Was the Servants’ Ball really so marvellous? It is invoked as an example of the cosy, protective relationship within the English country house between the family and their servants. But this traditional ChristmasRead more

Did servants suffer from SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder? The Victorian diaries of Mrs Sarah Wells, housekeeper of Uppark and mother to novelist H. G. Wells, reveal the physical and emotional cost of working in subterranean servant quarters. ‘So dark in these underground rooms!’ she wrote in 1892, twelve years into an anxious and exhausting tenureRead more

A dozen feathered hats, hidden within the fashion archives of the Victorian and Albert Museum, London, were my first introduction to Edwardian fashion addict Heather Firbank. Having viewed the hats – seductive, stylish, the last word in couture millinery – I was intrigued to know more about their wearer. And so I made an appointmentRead more