All reviews for Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir That Inspired "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey" (1968)
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This book was such a delight for a weekend "fun read."I, like everybody else and their Downton Abbey-loving mother, picked up this book in hopes to read hilarious or insightful anecdotes about kitchen maids, footmen, and the posh life upstairs, and to recapture beloved moments from a favorite BBC show. Margaret Powell's memoir is filled with meticulous details. She is brutally honest about work, about morals, about society, about her employers and fellow coworkers, and though laboring in a hot kitchen with a critical cook or scrubbing brass door handles with fingers riddled with chilblains, she maintains a positivity infused with hope of future success (in marriage) and happiness. Though domestic service was not her first option, and though she often referenced her ignorance when it came to certain life issues, she knew how to navigate her career in the kitchen and come out of the experience successfully.
I don't watch "Downton Abbey," and I've never seen "Upstairs, Downstairs," but I have always been interested in the "double life" of houses with servants. Mrs. Powell is not a writer, but she performs a service by writing this memoir. It's a real-life look at how people once worked and played and and thought. In the way that Powell just lays it all out in chronological order, the book reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Pioneer Girl."
Couldn't finish it. It was fine just not interesting enough to keep going.
Great background biography for Downton Abby fans.
Very interesting read!