Wednesday 28th September has not been a good day for me. I went to bed late and got up early for a swim and a sauna when I was up to neither. I have remained tired which has affected my response to viewing and writing, going to sleep twice during programmes which had then to be viewed again.
I kept my shop at Asda to the planned buys and no more and also kept to the food plan with a breakfast of cereals and microwaved mushrooms, Tex Mex platter for lunch with cherries, a tea of half a dozen pieces of anchovies on dry crackers and an evening meal of a vegetable quiche with mixed salad followed by a small portion of grapes. I drank one cup of coffee and one can of Pepsi. Tomorrow I go one better and cut out the tea, with fish for the main course, a banana and grapes being the fruit. There is no alarm call but I need to be bright and active in preparation for the arrival of the new fridge between 2 and 4pm.
I watched Sunday’s second episode of Downton Abbey and write now about the first two episodes together with the a review of the first of Fiona’s Bruce’s three documentaries insights into the three state residences of the British Monarchy, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Holyrood House. I also watched the second programme which was more interesting and impressive but will leave the writing to another day and the latest in the series Who do you think you are which will be my next writing this week, although tomorrow in addition to sort out for the new fridge day I want to continue the annual accounts and documentation location programme.
It was warm and sunny today with another day promised to morrow. My hope is that the good weather will continue until Friday when I will go out and enjoy what could be the best fine day before the horrors of autumn and winter.
I did not expect much of Downton Abbey as saying anything original about the life of an aristocratic family at their country estate before and during World War I, especially as the separate lives and the interactions were exceptionally well covered in Upstairs and Downstairs, and in other televisions series and films, some based on works of Literature such as the glorious Brideshead Revisited. Upstairs and Downstairs was revived after 25 years for a Christmas special series following the success of Downton Abbey but in order to attract a new audience they introduced what was thought to be the proposed visit of the King with Mrs Simpson but turned out to be Mrs Simpson with Von Ribbentrop’s during his stay in the UK as Ambassador.
I am therefore a late convert to the series and accept that there is some fine acting in the substantial cast but remain to be convinced that it is worth all the accolades and critical acclaim.
The series is based on a country house Highclere Castle in Berkshire which I do not know and the village of Bampton in Oxfordshire which I know very well having covered the village as a child care officer between 1964 and 1967 and returned during the last decade to photo and remember my experiences during those three years.
Now to the main story of the family. The Abbey used to be the property of the husband of the Violet Crawly, Countess of Grantham played by Maggie Smith but following the death of her husband and her only son inheriting, she becomes the Dowager, a traditionalist and increasingly frustrated and a pain in the backside because of her loss of power and control. Her performance reminds of that great actress Dame Edith Evans and her role In the Importance of Being Ernest.
Her son, the late middle aged Earl, is played by Hugh Bonnerville, as a very boring man and inadequate man who becomes frustrated when there is no one available to dress him in the various fancy dresses worn by the upper classes. He manages to find himself a good man’s man called Bates who becomes the subject of a criminal conspiracy by an ambitious Footman called Thomas Barrow after he is caught stealing wine. He also attempts to blackmail the Duke of Crowborough his former lover who visits the household on the pretext of being interested in Lady Mary but with the purpose of getting hold and destroying letters between him and Thomas. Thomas jumps ship by joining the military nursing corps to get him out of being called up into the front line and in the current series he gets back home by getting his hand shot, returns to the community and is found a job as an orderly at the local hospital. No doubt he is to play some black role in the present series.
The Earl is again frustrated in the present series because he is not allowed to have a command in the slaughter taking place in France but is given an honorary role in his former regiment to help recruitment and raise morale at home. Just when he has got his life organised his Valet Bates is taken from him again. How will he cope?
The problem is that the Earl has no son and heir and things go from bad to worse when the relative trained to take over the inheritance is lost through the sinking of the Titanic. He then finds that the heir is a middle class solicitor and not of their classes which understandably infuriates the Dowager who behave like a grand bitch (as opposed a common one) when the young man comes along for a visit with his mother.). However his ascendancy could mean problems for the Earl’s three daughters although the new heir seems a decent and honourable chap and things look good for the family when he takes a shine to the eldest daughter, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery.
However she is not interested and is willingly seduced by a visiting well connected Turk, a foreigner, aghast, who then dies while in her bed. The scandal is covered up. She then resists the advances of her cousin three times removed and the new heir, Mathew Crawley played by Dan Stevens, because she is no longer a virgin, despite pleas from her family to protect her estate and i heritance, and moves to the London House and intosociety as a young eligible woman of means, but limited dowry.
Her mother, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) is also a traditionalist in terms of her role, supporting her husband but frustrated that she has been unable to produce an heir. When against the odds she becomes pregnant there is great excitement until the child is effectively murdered by her personal maid after ensuring a miscarriage when her Ladyship gets out of her bath and falls on a piece of soap. The maid feared she was being replaced by another member of the household, who in fact her ladyship was arranging a job as a secretary more suited to the girl’s talents. These two events confirm by natural hostility to ever trusting someone to assist in ones care even if one had the means to do so and the necessity,
The Abbey is an impressive building but nothing Like Buckingham Palace which is the first of three Royal Palaces the subject of a Commercial documentary fronted by Fiona Bruce on BBC TV.
I like Fiona Bruce because she communicates as an integrated, competent, single minded and honest individual, reflected in her television roles, best known for fronting BBC News at 6 and at 10 and for the Antiques Roadshow.
She has an atypical background with a father who worked his way from postal boy to the managing Director of a division of Unilever and an education which took her from the Wirral where I lived for three years to the International School in Milan and the Haberdashers Sixth form College before reading French and Italian at Hertford College where for a brief period she became a punk and died her hair blue. She worked in Management Consultancy before moving to advertising where she married a Director and has two children. At a wedding she met the Editor of Panorama and persuaded him to give her a job as a researcher and from which she progressed to being one the leading presenters for the BBC.
I was disappointed by the first of the programmes which centred on Buckingham Palace. I quickly worked out why. The series appears designed to encourage visitors to the establishments and I found the constant shots of Fiona looking good but also at home in the Palaces disconcerting. The second programme on Windsor Castle is a considerable improvement but I will leave writing about this programme until Downton Abbey has progressed
The photography of the series is brilliant and the interiors sumptuous. I would have liked to been given a better idea of the present day structure of the building. I appreciate there has already been features about daily life in the Palace involving the Queen, her husband, others members of her family, the staff and a state occasion so it is understandable that the documentary concentrated on the four areas which the general public are able to see. The state rooms used for official entertaining are open during August and September for a fee ranging from £16 for the state rooms for those over 60 to £28.50 for an inclusive visit to the Picture Gallery and the Royal Mews. Some 50000 individual are thought to attend the Palace for the Royal Garden Parties, State and other functions every year. The Palace building is owned and maintained by the Nation. The State rooms are at back of the quadrangle with the Private Apartments to one side and the garden is the largest private open space in the capital.
Although Buckingham Palace has a history, owned by the Duke of Buckingham as his town house in 1705 and acquired by George III as a private residence for Queen Charlotte in 1761, it did not become the official residence of the reigning Monarch in London until 1837 and the ascendancy of Queen Victoria. With the death of Albert she retreated to Windsor and to Balmoral so it was not until the 20th century and the Second World War that the Palace started to become the modern Head of State business of today.
Its structure had not changed significantly since Victoria and Albert’s modernization but following the bombing of the Chapel during World War II it was replaced by what is known as the Queens Gallery to exhibit works of art from the Royal collection to the public since 1962.
I cannot make up my mind whether to approve or disapprove of such manifest wealth being acquired within one establishment unless its pays its way in terms of maintaining Britain’s economic position in the world but according to what I read we are now subject to the global economy so that tourism while important and the holding of state Do’s to impress and bring on side other countries is perhaps necessary. I have continuing misgivings about the ongoing influence of Royalty, Palaces, Titles etc has on developing a meaningful egalitarian society fit for purpose in the twenty first century. I did not see the point of shots of Fiona riding the grounds or on a Gondola in the Grand Canal to demonstrate the authenticity of the paintings in the Canelleto gallery.
Returning to Downton Abbey I looked in hope for continuing indications of rebellion on the part of family members and among staff against the way things had become. In the first series Lady Sybil, the youngest become interested in feminine and attends some public meetings with the help of the radical chauffer and in the present series she decides to become a nurse or nursing auxiliary which although approved by some members of family they are concerned at her lack of experience in the basics including boiling a kettle and making a cup of tea. She therefore ventures below stairs for some lessons to the great merriment of the staff but with encouragement she is able to bake a cake for a parental tea. After training she returns to the community hospital which is given over to the war wounded of body and mind.
The reality of the war is brought home with one officer blinded in battle committing suicide because he was told he would have to leave those giving him support, particularly the former rogue footman and homosexual Thomas and by Sybil. She puts pressure her parents to use the Abbey for those needing convalescing so they do not have to immediately jump back to the reality of the war or civilian life.
One of the staff wants to know for her sister’s sake the details of a telegram saying the son is missing in action. When she turns to the Earl for assistance he has the unpleasant news that the boy was shot because of cowardice in the face of the enemy. He persuades her to hide the truth from her sister, adding that situations may not be as straightforward as they then appeared. This observation is not one which was made by anyone other than conscientious objectors at the time and has taken nearly 100 before the names have been added to some first world war memorials.
The Valet brought in to look after the Earl following the departure of Bates has returned from the Front with shell shock. He, as his predecessor, commences a relationship with one of the other staff.
And what of hero Bates who first refused to defend the allegations against him because he had taken responsibility for his wife being a thief and this had led to their separation. Coming into an inheritance Bates believes that he can persuade his wife to agree to a divorce so he can marry head Housemaid Anne Smith (Joanne Froggatt) who was instrumental in clearing his name in the first series. They talk of setting up a small hotel together and of a family. However this all comes to naught when Mrs Bates arrives and blackmails her husband into immediately leaving or she will cause his employer embarrassment by revealing information she has gained. For the second time Bates leaves under a cloud while Anne holds on to her love even if there is to be no happy ending. Another reality of war comes with scenes of the heir ‘Apparent’ in France and his awareness of the odds against returning home alive.
He is able to visit with official leave and meets again Lady Mary who finds that she has remained in love with him. She has become involved with an older, blunt speaking, newspaper magnate who at the end of a second episode asks her marry him reminding of the relationship in Brideshead between Lady Julia Marchmain and the American after Lady Marchmain and family turns against Charles Ryder (who also went to Hertford College). Mathew returns to the Front but is brought back to England to assist his commanding officer in a recruiting campaign. He has become engaged to someone who appears to have the confidence of the class but whose background is under question and there are further questions when she is spotted in conversation with the Lady Mary’s suitor as they admit to knowing each other previously.
A focus in the second series is the loss of the young male staff to the call up. We learn that her Ladyship has been pulling strings getting the local physician to support claims that two of the staff are unfit and therefore should not be required to have official medicals. When this is discovered the position is remedied. This all adds pressure and stress on the traditional head of below stairs, the Butler, Charles Carson, played by Jim Carter. He is an authoritarian traditionalist and when things go wrong at a dinner he breaks down and is ordered rest and then has to accept that some of the female staff will have to undertake the roles of the departing men.
The middle daughter Lady Edith has not distinguished herself so far having deliberately ratted on her old sister. However Lady Mary gained her revenge by wrecking the blossoming relationship between Edith and Sir Anthony Strallen, a family friend. In the present series Edith has learned to drive and offers to help tenant farmers, the Drakes, when their Tractor driver is called up. She enjoys the work and turns the head of the married farmer whose wife senses danger and does her best to stop the relationship progressing. She determines that they will employ someone else.
Because of the suicide the Lady Sybil persuades the family against the wishes of the Dowager to use the Abbey as a convalescent home and this appears to be next aspect of the story to be covered. A third series is already being written with the first ending with the Armistice as part of a Christmas special.
I kept my shop at Asda to the planned buys and no more and also kept to the food plan with a breakfast of cereals and microwaved mushrooms, Tex Mex platter for lunch with cherries, a tea of half a dozen pieces of anchovies on dry crackers and an evening meal of a vegetable quiche with mixed salad followed by a small portion of grapes. I drank one cup of coffee and one can of Pepsi. Tomorrow I go one better and cut out the tea, with fish for the main course, a banana and grapes being the fruit. There is no alarm call but I need to be bright and active in preparation for the arrival of the new fridge between 2 and 4pm.
I watched Sunday’s second episode of Downton Abbey and write now about the first two episodes together with the a review of the first of Fiona’s Bruce’s three documentaries insights into the three state residences of the British Monarchy, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Holyrood House. I also watched the second programme which was more interesting and impressive but will leave the writing to another day and the latest in the series Who do you think you are which will be my next writing this week, although tomorrow in addition to sort out for the new fridge day I want to continue the annual accounts and documentation location programme.
It was warm and sunny today with another day promised to morrow. My hope is that the good weather will continue until Friday when I will go out and enjoy what could be the best fine day before the horrors of autumn and winter.
I did not expect much of Downton Abbey as saying anything original about the life of an aristocratic family at their country estate before and during World War I, especially as the separate lives and the interactions were exceptionally well covered in Upstairs and Downstairs, and in other televisions series and films, some based on works of Literature such as the glorious Brideshead Revisited. Upstairs and Downstairs was revived after 25 years for a Christmas special series following the success of Downton Abbey but in order to attract a new audience they introduced what was thought to be the proposed visit of the King with Mrs Simpson but turned out to be Mrs Simpson with Von Ribbentrop’s during his stay in the UK as Ambassador.
I am therefore a late convert to the series and accept that there is some fine acting in the substantial cast but remain to be convinced that it is worth all the accolades and critical acclaim.
The series is based on a country house Highclere Castle in Berkshire which I do not know and the village of Bampton in Oxfordshire which I know very well having covered the village as a child care officer between 1964 and 1967 and returned during the last decade to photo and remember my experiences during those three years.
Now to the main story of the family. The Abbey used to be the property of the husband of the Violet Crawly, Countess of Grantham played by Maggie Smith but following the death of her husband and her only son inheriting, she becomes the Dowager, a traditionalist and increasingly frustrated and a pain in the backside because of her loss of power and control. Her performance reminds of that great actress Dame Edith Evans and her role In the Importance of Being Ernest.
Her son, the late middle aged Earl, is played by Hugh Bonnerville, as a very boring man and inadequate man who becomes frustrated when there is no one available to dress him in the various fancy dresses worn by the upper classes. He manages to find himself a good man’s man called Bates who becomes the subject of a criminal conspiracy by an ambitious Footman called Thomas Barrow after he is caught stealing wine. He also attempts to blackmail the Duke of Crowborough his former lover who visits the household on the pretext of being interested in Lady Mary but with the purpose of getting hold and destroying letters between him and Thomas. Thomas jumps ship by joining the military nursing corps to get him out of being called up into the front line and in the current series he gets back home by getting his hand shot, returns to the community and is found a job as an orderly at the local hospital. No doubt he is to play some black role in the present series.
The Earl is again frustrated in the present series because he is not allowed to have a command in the slaughter taking place in France but is given an honorary role in his former regiment to help recruitment and raise morale at home. Just when he has got his life organised his Valet Bates is taken from him again. How will he cope?
The problem is that the Earl has no son and heir and things go from bad to worse when the relative trained to take over the inheritance is lost through the sinking of the Titanic. He then finds that the heir is a middle class solicitor and not of their classes which understandably infuriates the Dowager who behave like a grand bitch (as opposed a common one) when the young man comes along for a visit with his mother.). However his ascendancy could mean problems for the Earl’s three daughters although the new heir seems a decent and honourable chap and things look good for the family when he takes a shine to the eldest daughter, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery.
However she is not interested and is willingly seduced by a visiting well connected Turk, a foreigner, aghast, who then dies while in her bed. The scandal is covered up. She then resists the advances of her cousin three times removed and the new heir, Mathew Crawley played by Dan Stevens, because she is no longer a virgin, despite pleas from her family to protect her estate and i heritance, and moves to the London House and intosociety as a young eligible woman of means, but limited dowry.
Her mother, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) is also a traditionalist in terms of her role, supporting her husband but frustrated that she has been unable to produce an heir. When against the odds she becomes pregnant there is great excitement until the child is effectively murdered by her personal maid after ensuring a miscarriage when her Ladyship gets out of her bath and falls on a piece of soap. The maid feared she was being replaced by another member of the household, who in fact her ladyship was arranging a job as a secretary more suited to the girl’s talents. These two events confirm by natural hostility to ever trusting someone to assist in ones care even if one had the means to do so and the necessity,
The Abbey is an impressive building but nothing Like Buckingham Palace which is the first of three Royal Palaces the subject of a Commercial documentary fronted by Fiona Bruce on BBC TV.
I like Fiona Bruce because she communicates as an integrated, competent, single minded and honest individual, reflected in her television roles, best known for fronting BBC News at 6 and at 10 and for the Antiques Roadshow.
She has an atypical background with a father who worked his way from postal boy to the managing Director of a division of Unilever and an education which took her from the Wirral where I lived for three years to the International School in Milan and the Haberdashers Sixth form College before reading French and Italian at Hertford College where for a brief period she became a punk and died her hair blue. She worked in Management Consultancy before moving to advertising where she married a Director and has two children. At a wedding she met the Editor of Panorama and persuaded him to give her a job as a researcher and from which she progressed to being one the leading presenters for the BBC.
I was disappointed by the first of the programmes which centred on Buckingham Palace. I quickly worked out why. The series appears designed to encourage visitors to the establishments and I found the constant shots of Fiona looking good but also at home in the Palaces disconcerting. The second programme on Windsor Castle is a considerable improvement but I will leave writing about this programme until Downton Abbey has progressed
The photography of the series is brilliant and the interiors sumptuous. I would have liked to been given a better idea of the present day structure of the building. I appreciate there has already been features about daily life in the Palace involving the Queen, her husband, others members of her family, the staff and a state occasion so it is understandable that the documentary concentrated on the four areas which the general public are able to see. The state rooms used for official entertaining are open during August and September for a fee ranging from £16 for the state rooms for those over 60 to £28.50 for an inclusive visit to the Picture Gallery and the Royal Mews. Some 50000 individual are thought to attend the Palace for the Royal Garden Parties, State and other functions every year. The Palace building is owned and maintained by the Nation. The State rooms are at back of the quadrangle with the Private Apartments to one side and the garden is the largest private open space in the capital.
Although Buckingham Palace has a history, owned by the Duke of Buckingham as his town house in 1705 and acquired by George III as a private residence for Queen Charlotte in 1761, it did not become the official residence of the reigning Monarch in London until 1837 and the ascendancy of Queen Victoria. With the death of Albert she retreated to Windsor and to Balmoral so it was not until the 20th century and the Second World War that the Palace started to become the modern Head of State business of today.
Its structure had not changed significantly since Victoria and Albert’s modernization but following the bombing of the Chapel during World War II it was replaced by what is known as the Queens Gallery to exhibit works of art from the Royal collection to the public since 1962.
I cannot make up my mind whether to approve or disapprove of such manifest wealth being acquired within one establishment unless its pays its way in terms of maintaining Britain’s economic position in the world but according to what I read we are now subject to the global economy so that tourism while important and the holding of state Do’s to impress and bring on side other countries is perhaps necessary. I have continuing misgivings about the ongoing influence of Royalty, Palaces, Titles etc has on developing a meaningful egalitarian society fit for purpose in the twenty first century. I did not see the point of shots of Fiona riding the grounds or on a Gondola in the Grand Canal to demonstrate the authenticity of the paintings in the Canelleto gallery.
Returning to Downton Abbey I looked in hope for continuing indications of rebellion on the part of family members and among staff against the way things had become. In the first series Lady Sybil, the youngest become interested in feminine and attends some public meetings with the help of the radical chauffer and in the present series she decides to become a nurse or nursing auxiliary which although approved by some members of family they are concerned at her lack of experience in the basics including boiling a kettle and making a cup of tea. She therefore ventures below stairs for some lessons to the great merriment of the staff but with encouragement she is able to bake a cake for a parental tea. After training she returns to the community hospital which is given over to the war wounded of body and mind.
The reality of the war is brought home with one officer blinded in battle committing suicide because he was told he would have to leave those giving him support, particularly the former rogue footman and homosexual Thomas and by Sybil. She puts pressure her parents to use the Abbey for those needing convalescing so they do not have to immediately jump back to the reality of the war or civilian life.
One of the staff wants to know for her sister’s sake the details of a telegram saying the son is missing in action. When she turns to the Earl for assistance he has the unpleasant news that the boy was shot because of cowardice in the face of the enemy. He persuades her to hide the truth from her sister, adding that situations may not be as straightforward as they then appeared. This observation is not one which was made by anyone other than conscientious objectors at the time and has taken nearly 100 before the names have been added to some first world war memorials.
The Valet brought in to look after the Earl following the departure of Bates has returned from the Front with shell shock. He, as his predecessor, commences a relationship with one of the other staff.
And what of hero Bates who first refused to defend the allegations against him because he had taken responsibility for his wife being a thief and this had led to their separation. Coming into an inheritance Bates believes that he can persuade his wife to agree to a divorce so he can marry head Housemaid Anne Smith (Joanne Froggatt) who was instrumental in clearing his name in the first series. They talk of setting up a small hotel together and of a family. However this all comes to naught when Mrs Bates arrives and blackmails her husband into immediately leaving or she will cause his employer embarrassment by revealing information she has gained. For the second time Bates leaves under a cloud while Anne holds on to her love even if there is to be no happy ending. Another reality of war comes with scenes of the heir ‘Apparent’ in France and his awareness of the odds against returning home alive.
He is able to visit with official leave and meets again Lady Mary who finds that she has remained in love with him. She has become involved with an older, blunt speaking, newspaper magnate who at the end of a second episode asks her marry him reminding of the relationship in Brideshead between Lady Julia Marchmain and the American after Lady Marchmain and family turns against Charles Ryder (who also went to Hertford College). Mathew returns to the Front but is brought back to England to assist his commanding officer in a recruiting campaign. He has become engaged to someone who appears to have the confidence of the class but whose background is under question and there are further questions when she is spotted in conversation with the Lady Mary’s suitor as they admit to knowing each other previously.
A focus in the second series is the loss of the young male staff to the call up. We learn that her Ladyship has been pulling strings getting the local physician to support claims that two of the staff are unfit and therefore should not be required to have official medicals. When this is discovered the position is remedied. This all adds pressure and stress on the traditional head of below stairs, the Butler, Charles Carson, played by Jim Carter. He is an authoritarian traditionalist and when things go wrong at a dinner he breaks down and is ordered rest and then has to accept that some of the female staff will have to undertake the roles of the departing men.
The middle daughter Lady Edith has not distinguished herself so far having deliberately ratted on her old sister. However Lady Mary gained her revenge by wrecking the blossoming relationship between Edith and Sir Anthony Strallen, a family friend. In the present series Edith has learned to drive and offers to help tenant farmers, the Drakes, when their Tractor driver is called up. She enjoys the work and turns the head of the married farmer whose wife senses danger and does her best to stop the relationship progressing. She determines that they will employ someone else.
Because of the suicide the Lady Sybil persuades the family against the wishes of the Dowager to use the Abbey as a convalescent home and this appears to be next aspect of the story to be covered. A third series is already being written with the first ending with the Armistice as part of a Christmas special.
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