Name: Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times
ISBN: 9780393241099

Lucy Lethbridge

Paints a vivid picture of the lives of British servants through the letters and diaries of those who served in upper crust households and explores the complicated relationships and social implications between the server and those they served. 20,000 first printing.

Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times

A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice "Beautifully written, sparkling with insight, and a pleasure to read, Servants is social history at its most humane and perceptive." —Paul Addison, Times Literary Supplement From the immense staff running a lavish Edwardian estate to the lonely maid-of-all-work cooking in a cramped middle-class house, domestics were an essential yet unobtrusive part of the British hierarchy for much of the past century, required to tread softly and blend into the background. Lucy Lethbridge’s Servants gives them a voice in this discerning portrait of the complex relationship between the server, the served, and the world they lived in, opening a window on British society from the Edwardian period to the present.

Katherine

Sparked my passion for a subsection of history that I'm now working on a Master's degree proposal about thank you Lucy!!

An original, authoritative look at the social history of the twentieth century, brilliantly retold through the eyes of the household servants