LIFE BELOW STAIRS: Britain's Real Life Edwardian Servants

• Huge interest in ITV's period drama DOWNTON ABBEY which is set in Edwardian Britain, the third series which covers the first years of the 1920s starts in September.• Author a renowned expert social historian.• Complemented by numerous contemporary photographs.• Praise for the hardback edition: 'Pamela Horn marshalls hundreds of first-person accounts by both servants and employers... an excellent book' THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 'Wonderfully thorough... All human life, above and below stairs, is here' THE TIMES.• Weaves into the narrative the 'voices' of servants working in the British country house.By the end of the 1920s domestic service remained the largest female occupation in Britain. We view it today as an undesirable job, owing to the class divide it has come to represent, and this is reflected in the portrayals of mistresses and servants in books and on the screen in such dramas as Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey. But what do we really know about how girls felt when taking up these positions in other people's houses, or how they were treated? Pamela Horn uses first-hand accounts and reminiscences, as well as official records and newspaper reports, to extract the truth about the lives and status of men and women in domestic service from 1900 to 1939.