Publisher Description

During more than thirty years in a variety of houses, Bob Sharpe managed to rise from garden boy to valet and butler.As a boy he had to kill pheasant chicks, boil rabbits for the estate dogs, carry the wood up and down stairs every day for thirty fires and sleep on the floor outside his master's room. He cleaned shoes, ironed underwear and socks and once had to stand all night in the hall waiting for a late visitor to arrive.But as a butler he was the best paid servant in the house, waited on, feared and respected by the other servants. Bob Sharpe knew the real world of upstairs downstairs and the secrets of the landed gentry - even to the point of incest and attempted murder!

Notes

A revealing memoir of life below stairs, from butler Sharpe, who was born in 1902 and died in 1985. During more than thirty years in a variety of houses, Sharpe rose from garden boy to valet and butler. With appeal to fans of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs, it's part of a series of true life tales from servants.

Author Biography

Bob Sharpe, who was born in 1902 and died in 1985, worked both in London and in several country houses. Tom Quinn is the editor of the Country Landowner's Magazine. He has written several small books for small independent publishers. He has spent the last twenty years interviewing people who worked in domestic service, getting them to tell him their life stories.

Review

Reading this fascinating book is likely to unleash almost anyone's Inner Bolshevik... - Daily Mail

Promotional

A revealing memoir of life below stairs

Long Description

During more than thirty years in a variety of houses, Bob Sharpe managed to rise from garden boy to valet and butler.As a boy he had to kill pheasant chicks, boil rabbits for the estate dogs, carry the wood up and down stairs every day for thirty fires and sleep on the floor outside his master's room. He cleaned shoes, ironed underwear and socks and once had to stand all night in the hall waiting for a late visitor to arrive.But as a butler he was the best paid servant in the house, waited on, feared and respected by the other servants. Bob Sharpe knew the real world of upstairs downstairs and the secrets of the landed gentry - even to the point of incest and attempted murder!

Review Quote

"Well worth the read!" -Anglotopia.net

Promotional "Headline"

A revealing memoir of life below stairs

Description for Sales People

Life below stairs and its stories of the always tight-lipped, often tragic, occasionally romantic relations between servants and their masters and mistresses is a subject of great fascination for the British.

Details