Top ten books about servants

Lucy Lethbridge has written numerous books, as well as writing articles for the Observer, the Sunday Telegraph, the Independent on Sunday, the Times Literary Supplement, Art News, and Art+Auction. She lives in London.

Lethbridge's new book is Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times.

From her top ten list of books about servants as shared with the Guardian:

Below Stairs by Margaret Powell

This was among the inspirations for Upstairs, Downstairs. Published in 1968, the high summer of the country house seemed already very far away. Powell became in old age a celebrity authority on life below stairs – although she had railed furiously against it in her years as a kitchen maid and cook. With her radical politics, her tart conversation and her size nine feet she must have been a formidable figure in the servants' hall. Her voice is intelligent, witty, observant, waspish and wise, and her memoir is a gripping portrait of the inter-war world of the upper-middle classes.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue