The popular TV series Downton Abbey takes pains to hew closely to historical fact, and yet there remains much we don’t know about the reality of life in England’s grand country houses. How did aristocrats come to own such vast tracts of land? How was servants’ work regarded? And how did England’s servant system collapse after the Great War? The cultural historian Siân Evans, author of the book Life Below Stairs, joins Doug on Thursday to help us peel back the fictional veneer of Downton Abbey.
