The Butler S Guide To Clothes Care Managing The Table Running The Home And Other Graces

Perched on an island off the shores of Cornwall, England, the soaring castle of St. Michael’s Mount has been home to the St. Aubyn family since 1647. For nearly thirty years, Stanley Ager, one of the most esteemed butlers of the twentieth century, ensured that St. Michael’s Mount was an impeccable place to live and a gracious and welcoming one for guests to visit. Revered by everyone from royalty to the estate staff, Stanley Ager considered it his calling to run a home gracefully and efficiently. Several of the men whom he trained at St. Michael’s Mount went on to serve in the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace and at British embassies throughout the world. But you don’t need a manor to benefit from Ager’s wisdom on homekeeping. This carefully detailed, charmingly illustrated, eminently useful volume offers important insights and techniques, including how to: Wipe a glass—or a chandelier—until it sparkles *** Fold napkins precisely—in six different ways *** Polish furniture—or silver—to a mirror finish *** Lay a beautiful table and serve a meal impeccably *** Brush, buff, and maintain any manner of clothes and footwear *** Fold and pack for a trip—for business or pleasure *** Select and pour wine *** Stage “impromptu” romantic picnics *** And, among other graces, open a door soundlessly, roll an umbrella perfectly, and iron a newspaper

Country houses were reliant on an intricate hierarchy of servants, each of whom provided an essential skill. Up and Down Stairs brings to life this hierarchy and shows how large numbers of people lived together under strict segregation and how sometimes this segregation was broken, as with the famous marriage of a squire to his dairymaid at Uppark. Jeremy Musson captures the voices of the servants who ran these vast houses, and made them work. From unpublished memoirs to letters, wages, newspaper articles, he pieces together their daily lives from the Middle Ages through to the twentieth century. The story of domestic servants is inseparable from the story of the country house as an icon of power, civilisation and luxury. This is particularly true with the great estates such as Chatsworth, Hatfield, Burghley and Wilton. Jeremy Musson looks at how these grand houses were, for centuries, admired and imitated around the world.

'Hugely enjoyable' - Kathryn Hughes, Guardian Glorious ... Full of eyebrow-raising and laughter-inducing vignettes' - Daily Telegraph Servants 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 century. Here, the voices of servants and domestic staff are at last brought to life: their daily household routines, attitudes towards their employers, and to each other, throw into sharp and intimate relief the period of feverish social change through which they lived. Sweeping in its scope, extensively researched and brilliantly observed, Servants is an original and fascinating portrait of twentieth-century Britain; an authoritative history that will change and challenge the way we look at society.

Great Food Jobs 2: Ideas and Inspirations for Your Job Hunt, ?winner of the the 2013 Gourmand Special Award of the Jury, is an almanac of eminently useful career guidance mixed with tasty bites of utterly useless gastronomical nonsense, including weird sushi combinations and odd names of bakeries such as “Nice Buns.” A companion to the award-winning Food Jobs: 150 Great Jobs for Culinary Students, Career Changers and Food Lovers, this second volume describes an abundance of careers in the food industry in and out of the kitchen. In an era of ‘txt msgs,’ Chalmers’ Great Food Jobs 2 is refreshingly erudite, urbane, wry, witty,and consummately British. This sparkling, extraordinary compendium will astonish and amuse, inform and make you laugh out loud!

The household staff of Downton Abbey carry out their duties with effortless dignity, finesse and pride. Yet how do they know how exactly to lay the table, when to leave the room to give Lord and Lady Grantham their privacy, how to care for Lady Mary's furs and which uniform to wear when? This recently recovered and fascinating staff handbook answers all of these questions and more. Covering all the main positions of the Downton household - footman, lady's maid, housekeeper, groundsman and more - and with a general introduction for new members of staff from Carson the Butler, this book tells you everything you need to know about working below stairs in the grand estate of Downton Abbey.