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If You Like...Downton Abbey
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Can't get enough of the PBS hit, Downton Abbey? Try some of these books and DVDs that are similar in tone and time period, and feature members of the British aristocracy and their servants.
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The House at Riverton
by Kate Morton
Living out her final days in a nursing home, ninety-eight-year-old Grace remembers the secrets surrounding the 1924 suicide of a young poet during a glittering society party hosted by Grace's English aristocrat employers, a family that is shattered by war.
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Ashenden
by Elizabeth Wilhide
A saga of the upstairs and downstairs residents of an English country house spans more than two centuries and includes the stories of its original architect, soldiers billeted in the house during World War I, and a young couple who restores the house in the 1950s
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Falling Angels
by Tracy Chevalier
In a novel of manners and social divisions set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century England, two girls from different classes become friends, and their families' lives become intertwined in the process. By the author of Girl With a Pearl Earring.
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The Dower House
by Annabel Davis-Goff
Molly Hassard, an upper-class Irish orphan, flees poverty and the beautiful but dilapidated estate on which she was raised for the modern luxury of London, where she comes of age and learns to find her place between tradition and a new way of life.
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God Is an Englishman
by R. F. Delderfield
A military family's son who served in campaigns in India and the Crimea as part of a quest to found his own financial dynasty endeavors to woo the spirited daughter of a wealthy manufacturer, in a tale that brings readers from the plains of India to the slums of nineteenth-century London.
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Snobs : a Novel
by Julian Fellowes
Preparing to marry heir Charles Broughton, attractive accountant's daughter Edith Lavery makes humorous and astute observations about contemporary England's class system. A first novel by the screenplay writer of Gosford Park.
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The American Heiress
by Daisy Goodwin
A first novel by the anthologist of 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life presents the story of vivacious Cora Cash, whose early 20th-century marriage to England's most eligible duke is overshadowed by his secretive nature and the traps and betrayals of London's social scene..
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Love Is Not Enough
by Anne Herries
In this first book in a series, beautiful Marianne Trenwith has everything her younger sister, Sarah, wants, including the dashing Troy Pelham. As Sarah and Troy's friendship blossoms, Marianne warns her sister that a match will never be permitted. With the war clouds gathering, Sarah senses time is precious.
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The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Here is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
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The Crimson Rooms
by Katharine McMahon
Haunted by the death of her World War I soldier brother, struggling attorney Evelyn Gifford is astonished to learn that her brother fathered a child with a young nurse, a situation that is complicated by a seemingly impossible case involving a wrongfully convicted veteran. By the author of The Rose of Sebastopol.
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The House at Tyneford
by Natasha Solomons
A 19-year-old Jewish girl in 1938 Vienna escapes the Nazis by becoming a domestic servant in England at Tyneford, home of the aristocratic Rivers family, where she forms a friendship with the youngest son that changes them both.
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No Angel
by Penny Vincenzi
Routinely making decisions that have dangerous consequences, strong-willed aristocrat's daughter Celia Lytton sets in motion a series of events during World War I that have a particular impact on her family, a destitute woman, and others.
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Habits of the House
by Fay Weldon
The award-winning writer for Upstairs Downstairs presents a first entry in a new trilogy about the shared lives of masters and servants at the turn of the 20th century, tracing the family life of Cabinet hopeful Lord Robert, who hopes to alleviate financial woes by marrying his son to a disgraced Chicago heiress.
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The Viceroy's Daughters: The Lives of the Curzon Sisters
by Anne De Courcy
Based on unpublished letters and journal entries, this true tale of wealth, family, and sisterhood follows three young women--Irene, Cynthia, and Alexandra Curzon--from the same prosperous British family as they live through the opulent 1920s and 1930s.
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The Sisters: the Saga of the Mitford Family
by Mary S. Lovell
A powerful portrait of the humorous, eccentric, beautiful, and brilliant women known as the Mitfords who were shattered by the violent ideolgies of Europe between the wars follows Jessica, a Communist; Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy, a best-selling novelist; Diana, who was the most hated woman in England; and Unity, who was obsessed with Adolf Hitler.
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The Pursuit of Love
by Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford's most enduringly popular novel, The Pursuit of Love is a classic comedy about growing up and falling in love among the privileged and eccentric. Mitford modeled her characters on her own famously unconventional family. We are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin Fanny, who stays with them at Alconleigh, their Gloucestershire estate.
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Wait for Me!: Memoirs
by Deborah Mitford
Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy. "Wait for Me! "chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood roaming the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with her sister Unity and Adolf Hitler in 1937, to her marriage to Andrew Cavendish, the second son of the Duke of Devonshire. Written with intense warmth, charm, and perception, "Wait for Me!" is a unique portrait of an age of tumult, splendor, and change.
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The Edwardians
This 8-part BBC series profiles the movers and the shakers who exemplify the era's progressive spirit as well as its colorful eccentricities. It Follows the lives and careers of nine prominent Edwardian figures,and is filled with captivating characters who left their mark upon British society and the world at large.
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Forsyte Saga
The story of Soames Forsyte, a solcitor and the wealthy head of a middle-class family in London during the 19th century
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Gosford Park
The lives and interactions among a group of upper class and their servants at a weekend hunting party in the English country, and a mysterious murder that occurs among them
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Upstairs, Downstairs
A modern continuation of the 1970s classic. After a new family moves into the house belonging to the Bellamys, the former housemaid hires a new staff for the family and the aristocrats and their servants try to find a way to peacefully share their living space.
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