Tag: downton abbey

Take the Downton Abbey personality quiz! – Season 3 returns January, 2013

source: PBS

 

That’s right, our favorite British costume drama, Downton Abbey, returns on January 6, 2013, to PBS’ Masterpiece Theater. And because that is far too many months to wait, we have some Downton treats:

The show gets significant historical events right. The depiction of the 1918 “Spanish” ‘flu epidemic is accurate—it came on suddenly, people could be well in the morning and near death at night. And it was people in the prime of life, 20-40 year olds, who were most at risk.

However, the depiction of trench warfare is mixed. The show captures what scholar Paul Fussell described as the “ridiculous proximity” between the home front and the trenches. For instance, the posh department stores Fortnum and Mason and Harrods both had gift assortments specially chosen for the front—and delivery was efficient!

  • A photo slideshow, from the The Right Honourable Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham to Bates and Mr. Carson

 

Continue reading Take the Downton Abbey personality quiz! – Season 3 returns January, 2013

Inside the Real Downton Abbey

With TV’s Downton Abbey filmed at her spectacular Highclere Castle home, Fiona Carnarvon, the eighth countess of Carnarvon, lives in the world’s most recognised stately pile – and shares it with a ghost or two.

When was Highclere built?
The first recorded building was in 749, but my husband’s family acquired the property in 1679. It’s been altered many times, but the last big redesign was in the 19th century. It’s now regarded as one of Britain’s most important Victorian castles.

How big is it?
Somewhere between 200 and 300 rooms – nobody seems to know exactly. There are also 1000 acres [400ha] of parkland and 5000 acres [2000ha] of farm and woodland.

 

keep reading – Inside the Real Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey – British costume drama from the creator of Young Victoria – Season 1 free on PBS

Julian Fellowes is as English as Earl Grey and clotted cream. As an actor, director and writer, he has continually peeked under the petticoats of British mores and conveyed the details with relish to audiences. His writing of the upstairs-downstairs whodunit Gosford Park won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2002, and his subsequent films Vanity Fair and The Young Victoria established Fellowes as the class-fixated Anglophile’s Anglophile.

A lifelong Conservative, Fellowes was made a Peer of the Realm in 2011 and bestowed with the title Baron Fellowes of West Stafford.

Now with season two of the Edwardian-era Downton Abbey, the internationally syndicated costume drama he conceived and wrote for ITV, airing in the States as part of PBS’ Masterpiece.

Downton, the period piece most watched in the U.K. since Brideshead Revisited, left off last season with the outbreak of WWI and the able-bodied men in the household heading off to the trenches.

via LA Times Magazine

Get your anglophilia on!

Watch full episodes online at PBS.