'Downton Abbey' In The News

Downton Abbey is very popular & people love to talk about it. It's been mentioned in several articles this week:

The Providence Journal did quite a detailed a food blog about dining in the Edwardian time period titled:

Dining like the nobility of 'Downton Abbey' 

If you were an English aristocrat in the early 20th century, your life revolved around food. The formal, multi-course dinners depicted on the hit PBS Masterpiece Classic series "Downton Abbey" were meticulously researched and re-created. Imagine having Thanksgiving dinner every night. Back then they did. They ate a lot and they ate it often.

In Edwardian times, food was meant to impress guests and symbolize the wealth and social status of the family. From the selection of the china and silver and precise placement of the cutlery, to the dishes served by multiple footmen and the proper table etiquette, a meal was planned to perfection and lasted for hours. Wine cellars were stocked with Champagne and French claret matched to each course. How the tables are decorated in "Downton Abbey" with flowers directly on the cloth was adopted from Edwardian drawings.

Read the full blog here.


TheStar.com also has a Dowonton Abbey-style dining article about how to replicate a Downton Abbey dinner setting:

A Downton Abbey-style dinner setting at your fingertips

What’s old is new again in the ever-changing world of wining and dining your guests.

With the growing popularity in North America of British drama TV show Downton Abbey, Jackie Chiesa, president of William Ashley China, said many people are looking to replicate that refined action around their own candlelit dinner tables.

While trends may be channeling traditional dinner parties, Chiesa said some may still be hesitant to pull out their grandma’s old patterned plates.
 
To ease your party planning woes, Chiesa offered up the golden rules to throwing your own successful Downton Abbey-inspired dinner worthy of royalty...

The Daily Mail  has an article about a new Sky Atlantic series where today’s beleaguered aristocrats open up their homes to regular folk as overnight paying guests:

Back in the days of Lord Grantham, the lower classes all had housemaid’s knee and slept in the attic.

Now they have the chance to rub shoulders with the nobility as today’s beleaguered aristocrats open up their stately homes to every Tom, Dick and Harry as overnight paying guests. People who inherited their four-poster beds are giving them up to people who bought theirs from IKEA.

A fascinating new Sky Atlantic series explores what happens when two worlds collide and the classes come face to face on an equal footing.

The Swampscott Public Library gives a mention to the popularity of the biography, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle by The Countess of Carnarvon:

Biographies are always popular books in a library and Swampscott is no exception. We constantly have the story of people’s lives in great demand.

Some of the more popular biographies right now are the following:

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey : the lost legacy of Highclere Castle / by The Countess of Carnarvon. This book tells the story behind Highclere Castle which is the  real-life inspiration and setting for Julian Fellowes's Emmy Award-winning PBS show. It details the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon. The popularity of the series Downton Abbey has generated a great deal of interest in this biography.

Finally, all over the news this week was the Downton Abbey season three teaser given by Masterpiece executive producer, Rebecca Eaton.

For those of you who don't like to be spoiled, I'm just posting the link to the article so don't click it. Read about the season three spoilers here.