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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

If the rumours are true, production on Downton Abbey – The Movie begins in 2017, for release Christmas 2018. Yay! But will it be more of the same slightly nutty soap opera, or will Julian Fellowes give us something more authentic, as he did with the Oscar-winning Gosford Park? My only gripe with Downton was that the servants never did any real work.Read more

Daisy Mason of TV’s Downton Abbey: opinionated, outspoken and ambitious The wheels at Downton Abbey have cranked forward a year. It is now 1925. And mutinous kitchen maid Daisy Mason – now assistant cook – is causing trouble, railing against ‘the system’, speaking her mind in places she shouldn’t. Is this credible? Visiting ladies’ maids brought withRead more

To leaf through The Lady from the 1880s to the present day is to experience at breakneck speed a furiously changing Britain. Not just the false hairpieces and corset shapes (imagine doing your housework in a ‘Swan’s Bill’ corset, an excruciating S-shape made fashionable by Queen Alexandra, with the unfortunate side effect of flatulence). Britain’s longestRead more

EVER since Mr Carson and Mrs Hughes were seen coyly holding hands at that servants’ outing to the seaside, Downton Abbey viewers have been waiting patiently for the payoff. And, one year later, so it came: a gruff marriage proposal from the man resembling a cautious yet loveable badger. That Carson/Hughes moment: just an innocentRead more