Hardback: No aspect of the twentieth-century home has expressed quite so eloquently the traditional English idea of the ordered life as the keeping of servants.
From the ostentatious luxury of the Edwardian rich to the middle-class housewives eking out a modest budget in order to keep a house-parlourmaid, the servant was the marker of social success.
Thousands of unseen, unheard household staff toiled in kitchens, parlours and country houses at the turn of the century, stirring eggs so that the yolks would be perfectly centred, ironing shoelaces and blacking grates. A typical maid-of-all-work carried an estimated three tons of water up and down stairs every week.
The stories of below-stairs workers are the untold history of the last century, their fortunes a barometer of the twilight years of the landed estates, the development of new technologies, the changing place of both men and women and the radical shifts in domestic life.
Spanning over a hundred years, Lucy Lethbridge brings to life through letters and diaries the voices of countless men and women who have been largely ignored by the historical record. She also interviews former and current servants for their recollections of this waning profession.
From the quintessential liveried servant of 1900 to the self-service of the 1970s, these are stories of aspirations, ideals, hope and disappointment across the classes.
Sweeping in its scope, extensively researched and brilliantly observed, this book offers a fresh and intimate insight into an invisible population, a clamour of voices telling us what their lives were really like and opens a window onto British society from the Edwardian period to the present. Servants (2013) is the most authoritative and comprehensive account yet of those who worked behind the scenes of twentieth-century Britain.
About the author: Lucy Lethbridge has written for a number of publications and is also the author of several children's books, one of which, Who Was Ada Lovelace?, won the 2002 Blue Peter Award for non-fiction. She lives in London.
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