*FOYLES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH*'I really can't recommend this enough - especially if you are going on holiday' Tom Holland**'**Delightful ... Lucy Lethbridge has written a glorious romp of a book' Kathryn Hughes, The Mail on Sunday'It is the paramount wish of every English heart, ever addicted to vagabondizing, to hasten to the Continent…'In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo...

'Hugely enjoyable' - Kathryn Hughes, GuardianGlorious ... Full of eyebrow-raising and laughter-inducing vignettes' - Daily TelegraphServants is the social history of the last century through the eyes of those who served. From the butler, the footman, the maid and the cook of 1900 to the au pairs, cleaners and childminders who took their place seventy years later, a previously unheard class offers a fresh perspective on a dramatic c...

In the late nineteenth century, general housework in the British home was so labour intensive that it required an army of servants to undertake it. Since then, the ways in which we look after our homes may have changed dramatically but the best and simplest of methods from that time still work for us today.From floor to ceiling, and leaving no awkward corner untouched, here are the tricks and techniques that generations once took for granted, distilled for modern use: how to get rid...

Daughter of the famous romantic poet Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace was a child prodigy. Brilliant at maths, she read numbers like most people read words.Lady Byron wanted Ada to be as unlike her father as possible. Ada grew up surrounded by an army of tutors who taught her every subject every waking moment, except for poetry.In 1843 Ada came to the attention of Charles Babbage, a scientist and inventor who had just built a miraculous machine called the ‘Difference Engine’. Ada and Mr Babbage st...

Bloomsbury presents Tourists written and read by Lucy Lethbridge.*FOYLES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH*'I really can't recommend this enough – especially if you are going on holiday' Tom Holland'Delightful ... Lucy Lethbridge has written a glorious romp of a book' Kathryn Hughes, The Mail on Sunday‘It is the paramount wish of every English heart, ever addicted to vagabondizing, to hasten to the Continent…’In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo brought to an en...

Elizabeth I acceded to the throne in 1558, restoring the Protestant faith to England. At the heart of the new queen's court lay Elizabeth's bedchamber, closely guarded by the favoured women who helped her dress, looked after her jewels and shared her bed.Elizabeth's private life was of public, political concern. Her bedfellows were witnesses to the face and body beneath the make-up and elaborate clothes, as well as to rumoured illicit dalliances with such figures as Robert Dudley. ...

From the bestselling popular historian comes a masterly recreation of Victorian London, whose raucous streets and teeming denizens inspired and permeated the works of one of Britain's - and the world's - greatest novelists: Charles Dickens.The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented transformation, and nowhere was this more apparent than on the streets of London. In only a few decades, London grew from a Regency town to the biggest city the world had ever se...

For 'Downton Abbey' fans: a new title in the popular Swallowcliffe Hall series! This is the journal of Eugenie Vye: the prettiest debutante of the 1890 season, with hair she can sit on and a seventeen-inch waist – yet somehow three years later, still unmarried. Lord Vye's daughter might be thought to want for nothing, but life isn't easy on fifty guineas a year with a jealous stepmother watching one's every move. Eugenie's passionate nature and unerring ability to get hold of the wrong end...

The bestselling social history of Victorian domestic life, told through the letters, diaries, journals and novels of 19th-century men and women.Some images were unavailable for this electronic edition.The Victorian age is both recent and unimaginably distant. In the most prosperous and technologically advanced nation in the world, people carried slops up and down stairs; buried meat in fresh earth to prevent mould forming; wrung sheets out in boiling water with their bare h...

“A vivid, entertaining and often comical portrait of life at court.” —Wall Street Journal“Compelling. . . . The rhythm of court life at Windsor or Balmoral is the backdrop to a rich human drama, a story of people existing in uneasy intimacy with the royal family.” — Daily Telegraph (London)Based on the letters and diaries of six members of Queen Victoria's household, Serving Victoria offers unique insight into the queen and her court. Seen through the eyes of her servants—i...

Polly Perkins can hardly believe her luck when she is taken on as under-housemaid at Swallowcliffe Hall. At first it's all she can do to keep up, with endless fires to be laid and beds to be made, never mind when guests arrive from London for a country house party. Will she ever feel at home in this grand old house, full of whispers and ghosts from the past? But friendship and comfort are found in unexpected places and Polly slowly becomes used to her new life - until the discovery of a tr...

A New York Times–bestselling biographer "evokes the luminous spirit of Kick Kennedy" in this account of the beloved socialite and sister of JFK ( Vanity Fair).Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy was the incandescent life-force of the fabled Kennedy family, her father's acknowledged "favorite of all the children" and her brother Jack's "psychological twin." She was the Kennedy of Kennedys, sure of her privilege, magnetically charming and somehow not quite like ...