Friday, March 14, 2014

Servants by Lucy Lethbridge

Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times by Lucy Lethbridge --- 325 pages

British author Lucy Lethbridge has written an admirable social history of the relationship between "downstaris" and "upstairs" --- servants and served --- in Great Britain, from the heyday of the great landed estates in the late nineteenth century through the economic and social upheavals of the early to mid-twentieth centuries that reverberated through all the class relationships of British society.

Thoroughly researched, Lethbridge brings her subject to vivid life by quoting those who worked as servants and whose personal testimony, captured in diaries, letters, newspaper and magazine articles and published memoirs, has been largely ignored in the histories of the Empire. The images of "downstairs" shaped by popular culture and nostalgia for the splendors of the past are given a brisk, unsentimental clearing out in the words of those who "don't want them days again."  

Entertaining and illuminating. Fans of Downton Abbey will find this eye-opening.

Click HERE to listen to a recent interview with author Lucy Lethbridge on National Public Radio's popular "Fresh Air" program.

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