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Left penniless when her husband dies, Julia Hollis, accustomed to an opulent life in Victorian London, moves with her children to the village of Gresham. There she takes in boarders at Larkspur, an old abandoned coaching inn. Overwhelmed by her new responsibilites, she none-the-less takes interest in the eligible new vicar who moves into town.

In this 1867 classic from Anthony Trollope, we follow the predicaments of Harry Clavering as he tries to find his path in both love and work. Jilted by his first love Julia Brabazon for another man several years previously, Harry finds himself once again caught in a love triangle when Julia returns following her husband's death only to find that Harry has by now pledged himself to another. What follows is a true Trollopian tale of romance, humour...

"They were the super rich of their times, pampered beyond belief - the early 20th-century Edwardian gentry, who lived like superstars, their every desire or need catered to by an army of butlers, servants, footmen, housekeepers and grooms. Class, money, inheritance, luxury and snobbery dominated every aspect of the lives of the upper-crust Edwardian family. Below stairs the staff inhabited a completely different world, their very dependent on servicing...

Much has been written about the lives of the Tudors, but it is sometimes difficult to really grasp how they experienced the world. Using the five senses, Amy Licence presents a new perspective on the material culture of the past, exploring the Tudors' relationship with the fabric of their existence, from the clothes on their back, roofs over their heads and food on their tables, to the wider questions of how they interpreted and presented themselves,...

Covering almost 30 years in the life and loves of Mark Lennan, The Dark Flower opens in 1880 with 18-year-old undergraduate Mark studying art at Oxford, and ends 30 years later with Mark ostensibly happily married, yet torn between his wife and a beautiful teenage girl--the last and most disturbing manifestation of the "dark flower" of passion. Within a dozen pages, Galsworthy establishes his mastery of compelling narrative and sketches an irresistible...

During a party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is dreaming of the future. She spies a stranger coming up the road and sees her mother speak to him. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy. Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded...

"Grant Harrold had been obsessed with the royaly family since childhood. In this unforgettable memoir, we journey along with Grant ashe finds his way to the heart of the royal household. The unique relationship between the monarch and their staff has always been shrouded in mystery but The Royal Butler artfully reveals never before heard stories about his time in royal service. Today, Grant Harrold isa leading expert on etiquette, and in The Royal...

The servants at Longbourn estate, only glancingly mentioned in Jane Austen's classic, take center stage in Jo Baker's lively, cunning new novel. Here are the Bennets as we have never known them: seen through the eyes of those scrubbing the floors, cooking the meals, emptying the chamber pots. Our heroine is Sarah, an orphaned housemaid beginning to chafe against the boundaries of her class. When the militia marches into town, a new footman arrives...

"Compiled by the historical adviser to the TV series "The 1940s House," this is an engagingly written social chronicle of wartime civilian life in England from September 1939 to August 1945-from the grandeurs of the Blitz to the miseries of dried egg powder-with numerous individual testimonies." -- provided by publisher.

On the heels of her triumphant "How to Be a Victorian," Ruth Goodman travels even further back in English history to the era closest to her heart, the dramatic period from the crowning of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth I. Drawing on her own adventures living in re-created Tudor conditions, Goodman serves as our intrepid guide to sixteenth-century living. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work celebrates the ordinary...