The must-read memoir from Rose Plummer, a maid in interwar London. A proper piece of English history: perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs'I felt like I was getting somewhere that evening. Sitting by the window sipping my tea and eating lovely iced buns, I felt I'd come such a long way from Hoxton. I had some money . . . As I sat there I realised I didn't want to go back to my gloomy room at the top of that old house. I w...

The must-read memoir from Nancy Jackman, a cook in interwar England. Perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, DownstairsAn inspirational true story loved by readers:'To read Nancy's story in her own words was an absolute joy. The history, the humour, a perfect read of times gone by.' - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ READER REVIEW'Touching, funny, nostalgic. This book opens a door into a world long ago and is a gem p...

The must-read memoir from Kathleen Clifford, an English housekeeper who worked in the Spencer family home in the interwar years. Perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs'My favourite gossips were William and Jimmy. I only got the chance to talk to them now and then as I spent most of my time hurtling round the kitchen trying not to upset the cook who was my immediate and terrifying boss. I lost a lot of weight in my time in S...

The Blitz had made many families in the East End of London homeless. One solution was to erect prefabs on fields and open spaces to give temporary accommodation to those who had been bombed out. It was in one of these 'modern' boxes that young Norman Jacobs grew up through the 1950s and 1960s. In a lively, detailed and humorous picture of a postwar Hackney childhood, Norman takes us back to an age of rationing, bomb sites, street markets, colourful characters and camaraderie. And in remini...

This delightful memoir provides a unique 'Upstairs, Downstairs'account of what life was really like in a bygone era.At the age of sixteen, Flo Wadlow left her family to begin what would become a distinguished life 'in service'. Starting as a kitchen maid in London, she soon rose through the ranks and worked at many of England's great houses including Woodhall in Hilgay where she met scullery maid Mollie Moran, author of Aprons and Silver Spoons; Hatfield House and Bl...

'I THOUGHT I'D GONE TO A PRISON'This was Hilda Newman's first impression when, at the age of 19, she left her parents' little terraced cottage in Lincolnshire and embarked on a new life as a lady's maid at Croome Court, the enormous stately home of Lord and Lady Coventry.The year was 1935: the twilight of the English aristocracy. It was a time of wealth and glamour; of lavish balls and evening gown; of tiaras and a Coronation. As personal maide to Lady Coventry, Hilda had a unique insight ...

Emily Huckwell spent almost her entire life working for one family. Born in a tiny Sussex village in the 1870s, she went into domestic service in the Burton household before she was twelve, earning £5 a year. She began as a nursery maid, progressing to under nurse and then head nanny, looking after two generations of children. One of the children in her care was the father of Noel Streatfeild, the author of Ballet Shoes and one of the best-loved children's writers of the 20th century. Basi...

Step back a hundred years to the world of the pampered, privileged upper classes and look inside Downton Abbey to find out exactly what goes on behind the magisterial doors of TV's favourite stately home. 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 dom...

I was born in a tenement flat in the East End of London in the year in which Queen Victoria died.'FOUR MEALS FOR FOURPENCE is Grace Foakes's memories of her girlhood in Wapping in the early 1900s. With a child's uncluttered eye, she describes the small details - shopping in the market, men waiting for work at the dock gates, the rituals of washday, the sights, sounds and smells of the old East End of London. She also describes the fear - of illness, of unemployment, of the workhous...

After her years in domestic service, Winifred Foley married and started a family. But, while scraping a living as a charwoman in a rundown north London tenement, she continued to long for her home in the Forest of Dean and the cherished relatives she had left behind. Determined to give their children the rural upbringing she had enjoyed, the young couple moved to an isolated, crumbling cottage not far from the Forest. But even in the 1950s they lacked heating or running water, and money wa...

For 'Downton Abbey' fans: a new title in the popular Swallowcliffe Hall series! This is the journal of Eugenie Vye: the prettiest debutante of the 1890 season, with hair she can sit on and a seventeen-inch waist – yet somehow three years later, still unmarried. Lord Vye's daughter might be thought to want for nothing, but life isn't easy on fifty guineas a year with a jealous stepmother watching one's every move. Eugenie's passionate nature and unerring ability to get hold of the wrong end...

Winifred Foley grew up in the 1920s, a bright, determined miner's daughter - in a world of unspoilt beauty and desperate hardship, in which women were widowed at thirty and children died of starvation. Living hand-to-mouth in a tumbledown cottage in the Forest of Dean, Foley - 'our Poll' - had a loving family and the woods and streams of a forest 'better than heaven' as a playground. But a brother and sister were dead in infancy, bread had to be begged from kindly neighbours and she never ...