If You Like Downton Abbey...: Upstairs and Downstairs Lives at Downton Abbey

Bailey turns from fiction to nonfiction in her account of the Fitzwilliam dynasty in the early 1900s. The Fitzwilliams gained all of their wealth through their coal mining dynasty and as a result, should have been in the clear monetarily wise. After the sixth Earl of Fitzwilliam died in 1902, he left behind 3 millions pounds, a fortune in those times, and also four sons. The Fitzwilliams family legacy swirled with scandal from pregnancies out of wedlock, affairs, feuds, and disputes with workers. Through Bailey's research of the Fitzwilliam family, she discovered that many of their records were intentionally destroyed in a fire, leaving many more mysteries to forever shroud the family.

This book happened as an act of circumstance. While researching material for another book, historian Catherine Bailey found gaps in letters of John Manners, the 9th Duke of Rutland. Searching for those letters, Bailey discovers secrets of this family during WWI. Three periods of the Duke's life were erased and Bailey finds out secrets involving his mother, Violet, the Duchess of Rutland, who strove to control her son's life in every aspect and other secrets involving death, war, and codes.

For fans of Downton Abbey comes an immersive historical epic about a lavish English manor and a dynasty of rich and powerful women who ruled the estate over three centuries of misbehavior, scandal, intrigue, and passion. Five miles from Windsor Castle, home of the royal family, sits the Cliveden estate. Overlooking the Thames, the mansion is flanked by two wings and surrounded by lavish gardens. Throughout its storied history, Cliveden has been a setting for misbehavior, intrigue, and passion--from its salacious, deadly beginnings in the seventeenth century to the 1960s Profumo Affair, the sex scandal that toppled the British government. Now, in this immersive chronicle, the manor's current mistress, Natalie Livingstone, opens the doors to this prominent house and lets the walls do the talking. Built during the reign of Charles II by the Duke of Buckingham, Cliveden attracted notoriety as a luxurious retreat in which the duke could conduct his scandalous affair with the ambitious courtesan Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury. In 1668, Anna Maria's cuckolded husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, challenged Buckingham to a duel. Buckingham killed Shrewsbury and claimed Anna Maria as his prize, making her the first mistress of Cliveden. Through the centuries, other enigmatic and indomitable women would assume stewardship over the estate, including Elizabeth, Countess of Orkney and illicit lover of William III, who became one of England's wealthiest women; Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the queen that Britain was promised and then denied; Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, confidante of Queen Victoria and a glittering society hostess turned political activist; and the American-born Nancy Astor, the first female member of Parliament, who described herself as an 'ardent feminist' and welcomed controversy. Though their privileges were extraordinary, in Livingstone's hands, their struggles and sacrifices are universal. Cliveden weathered renovation and restoration, world conflicts and cold wars, societal shifts and technological advances. Rich in historical and architectural detail, The Mistresses of Cliveden is a tale of sex and power, and of the exceptional women who evaded, exploited, and confronted the expectations of their times; Praise for The Mistresses of Cliveden: 'An utterly fascinating and completely beguiling account of three centuries of high living, high politics, and high drama at one of Britain's most famous stately homes. A page-turner from start to finish, it's history with all the good stuff left in'--Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire; 'A wonderful voyage through the fascinating history of Cliveden--this is a brilliant book full of gripping personalities and beautiful detail'--Kate Williams, author of Ambition and Desire ...

Warwick introduces and discusses the relationships between the aristocracy and their servants. Interspersed with photographs, this brief history of upper-class life takes readers through a typical day. Illustrations and recollections help Warwick formulate this book.

In this book, Lethbridge discusses a scenario in the 1930s when a social researcher spent time as a scullery maid in a big London house. While examining life within that specific house's upstairs and downstairs life, the author also takes a turn at exploring the shifting ideas of domestic service in the country as a whole. Fans of the servant and family dynamic in Downton Abbey will enjoy this book as it dives deeper into this relationship.

Dawes put together this book as a result of the hundreds of personal accounts of servants that he was flooded with when he asked for responses. This book allows readers a unique insight into actual stories of servants, as well as photographs showing their working conditions.

Everything upstairs in Edwardian life was a picture of calm, order, and elegance. Downstairs, the house staff worked immensely hard to keep the upstairs running as smooth as possible. In this book, Maloney goes back in time and dissects what life was really like for those who worked downstairs: both the positives and the negatives.

A deliciously told group biography of the young, rich, American heiresses who married impoverished, British gentry at the turn of the twentieth century - the real women who inspired Downton Abbey. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known 'Dollar Princess', married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age. Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive first-hand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England - and what England thought of them