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REMEMBERING 2016 / Message from Jeeves / Revista DOZE. / 2016.

 Revista DOZE , published an article / profile , kindly giving me the opportunity to express my views and definitions around aesthetics, style , the principles of my garderobe and its connection with the decor of my interiors, the fundamental differences between the Gentleman and the Dandy, enfin, my aesthetic philosophy of Life and its role in the great mystery of Existence.

Greetings Jeeves / António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho / Architectural Historian
PHOTOS: Michael Floor.

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Secrets of the Manor House - Part 1/4

Secrets of the Manor House: Recap and Review

January 22, 2012 by Vic

https://janeaustensworld.com/2012/01/22/secrets-of-the-manor-house-recap-and-review/

 

This Sunday, PBS will air on most stations an hour presentation of  Secrets of the Manor House, a documentary narrated by Samuel West, that explains how society was transformed in the years leading up to World War One. Expert historians, such as Lawrence James and Dr. Elisabeth Kehoe, discuss what life was like in these houses, explain the hierarchy of the British establishment, and provide historical and social context for viewers. For American viewers of Downton Abbey, this special couldn’t have come at a better time.

 

The British manor house represented a world of privilege, grace, dignity and power.

 

For their services for the King in war, soldiers were awarded lands and titles. The aristocracy rose from a warrior class.

 

This world was inhabited by an elite class of people who were descended from a line of professional fighting men, whose titles and land were bestowed on them by a grateful king.

 

Manderston House, Berwickshire.

For over a thousand years, aristocrats viewed themselves as a race apart, their power and wealth predicated on titles, landed wealth, and political standing.

 

Vast landed estates were their domain, where a strict hierarchy of class was followed above stairs as well as below it. In 1912, 1 ½ million servants tended to the needs of their masters. As many as 100 would be employed as butler, housekeeper, house maids, kitchen maids, footmen, valets, cooks, grooms, chauffeurs, forestry men, and agricultural workers. Tradition kept everyone in line, and deference and obedience to your betters were expected (and given).

 

 

22 staff were required to run Manderston House, which employed 100 servants, many of whom worked in the gardens, fields, and forests.

 

As a new century began, the divide between rich and poor was tremendous. While the rich threw more extravagant parties and lived lavish lives, the poor were doomed to live lives of servitude and hard work.

 

Manderston House in Berwickshire represents the excesses of its time. The great house consists of 109 rooms, and employed 98 servants just before the outbreak of World War One. Twenty two servants worked inside the house to tend to Lord Palmer and his family. Every room inside the house interconnected.

 

The curtains and drapes, woven with gold and silver thread, were made in Paris in 1904 and cost the equivalent of 1.5 million dollars. Manderston House itself was renovated at the turn of the century for 20 million dollars in today’s money. This was during an era when scullery maids earned the equivalent of $50 per year.

 

The servant hall boasted 56 bells, each of a different size that produced a unique ring tone. Servants were expected to memorize the sound for the areas that were under their responsibility.

 

Scullery maids were placed at the bottom of the servant hierarchy. They rose before dawn to start the kitchen fires and put water on to boil. Their job was to scrub the pots, pans and dishes, and floors, and even wait on other servants.

 

Life was not a bed of roses for the working class and the gulf between the rich and poor could not have been wider than during the turn of the 21st century.

 

Thoroughbred horses lived better than the working classes.

 

While the servants slept in the attic or basement, thoroughbred horses were housed in expensively designed stable blocks. As many as 16 grooms worked in the stables, for no expense was spared in tending to their needs.

 

The stables at Manderston House required 16 grooms to feed, care for, and exercise the horses.

 

As men and women worked long hours, as much as 17-18 hours per day, the rich during the Edwardian era lived extravagant, indulgent lives of relaxation and pleasure, attending endless rounds of balls, shooting parties, race meetings, and dinner parties.

 

Up to the moment that war was declared, the upper classes lived as if their privileged lives would never change.

 

The Edwardian era marked the last great gasp of manor house living with its opportunities of providing endless pleasure. For the working class and poor, the inequities within the system became more and more apparent. The landed rich possessed over one half of the land. Their power was rooted in owning land, for people who lived on the land paid rent. The landed gentry also received income from investments,  rich mineral deposits on their land, timber, vegetables grown in their fields, and animals shipped to market.

 

The lord of the manor and his steward can be seen walking among the farm laborers, many of whom were women.

 

The need to keep country estates intact and perpetuate a family’s power was so important that the eldest son inherited everything – the estate, title, all the houses, jewels, furnishings, and art. The laws of primogeniture ensured that country estates would not be whittled away over succeeding generations. In order to consolidate power, everything (or as much as possible) was preserved. Entailment, a law that went back to the 13th century, ensured that portions of an estate could not be sold off.

 

The system was rigged to favor the rich. Only men who owned land could vote, and hereditary peers were automatically given a seat in the House of Lords. By inviting powerful guests to their country estates, they could lobby for their special interests across a dinner table, at a shoot, or at a men’s club.

 

Thoroughbred horses were valued for their breeding and valor, traits that aristocrats identified with.

 

The Industrial Revolution brought about changes in agricultural practices and inventions that presaged the decline of aristocratic wealth. Agricultural revenues, the basis on which landed wealth in the UK was founded, were in decline. Due to better transportation and refrigeration, grain transported from Australia and the U.S. became cheaper to purchase. Individuals were able to build wealth in other ways – as bankers and financiers. While the landed gentry could still tap resources from their lands and expand into the colonies, the empire too began to crumble with the rise of nationalism and nation states.

 

The servant hierarchy echoed the distinctions of class upstairs. The chef worked at the end of the table on the left, while the lowest ranking kitchen maids chopped vegetables at the far right. The kitchen staff worked 17 hours a day and rarely left the kitchen.

 

Contrasted with the opulent life above stairs was an endless life of drudgery below stairs. On a large estate that entertained visitors, over 100 meals were prepared daily. Servants rose at dawn and had to stay up until the last guest went to bed. Kitchen maids, who made the equivalent of 28 dollars per year, rarely strayed outside the kitchen.

 

 Steep back stairs that servants used. Out of sight/out of mind.

 

One bath required 45 gallons of water, which had to be hauled by hand up steep, narrow stairs. At times, a dozen guests might take baths on the same day. House maids worked quietly and unseen all over the manor house. The were expected to move from room to room using their own staircases and corridors. Underground tunnels allowed servants to move unseen crossing courtyards.

 

Maids and footmen lived in their own quarters in the attic or basement. Men were separated from the women and were expected to use different stairs. Discipline was strict. Servants could be dismissed without notice for the most minor infraction.

 

Footmen tended to be young, tall, and good looking.

 

Footmen, whose livery cost more than their yearly salary, were status symbols. Chosen for their height and looks, they were the only servants allowed to assist the butler at dinner table. These men were the only servants allowed upstairs.

 

Green baize doors separated the servants quarters from the master's domain.

 

Green baize doors were special doors that marked the end of the servants quarters and hid the smells of cooking and noises of the servants from the family.

 

The Jerome sisters were (l to r) Jennie, Clara, and Leonie

 

As revenues from agriculture dwindled, the upper classes searched for a new infusion of capital.This they found in the American heiress, whose fathers had built up their wealth from trade and transportation. Free from the laws of primogeniture, these wealthy capitalists distributed their wealth among their children, sharing it equally among sons and daughters. The ‘Buccaneers,’ as early American heiresses were called, infused the British estates with wealth. ‘Cash for titles’ brought 60 million dollars into the British upper class system via 100 transatlantic marriages.

 

Transatlantic passages worked both ways, even as American heiresses crossed over to the U.K.,  millions of British workers emigrated to America looking for a better life. The sinking of the Titanic, just two years before the outbreak of World War One, underscored the pervasive issue of class.

 

Most likely this lifeboat from the Titanic was filled with upper class women and children. Only 1 in 3 people survived.

 

The different social strata were housed according to rank, and it was hard to ignore that a large percentage of first class women and children survived, while the majority of third and second class passengers died.

 

Labor strikes became common all over the world, including the U.K.

 

Society changed as the working class became more assertive and went on strikes. The Suffragette movement gained momentum. Prime Minister David Lloyd George was a proponent of reform, even as the aristocracy tried to carry on as before.

 

Lloyd George campaigned for progressive causes.

 

Inventions revolutionized the work place. Electricity, telephones, the type writer, and other labor-saving devices threatened jobs in service. A big house could be run with fewer staff, and by the 1920s a manor house that required 100 servants needed only 30-40.

 

Change is ever present. The last typewriter factory shut its doors in April, 2011.

 

Women who would otherwise have gone into service were lured into secretarial jobs, which had been revolutionized by the telephone and typewriter.

 

The manor house set enjoyed one last season in the summer of 1914, just before war began. Many of the young men who attended those parties would not return from France. Few expected that this war would last for six months, much less four years. Officers lost their lives by a greater percentage than ordinary soldiers, and the casualty lists were filled with the names of aristocratic men and the upper class.

 

Over 35 million soldiers and civilians died in World War 1

 

Common soldiers who had died by the millions had been unable to vote. Such inequities did not go unnoticed. Social discontent, noticeable before the war, resulted in reform – the many changes ushered in modern Britain.

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Shades of Tartan and Tweed.

I like to combine different shades and colors of Tartan and Tweed.

By the way, the hacking jacket has the unique superb texture and cut by Pytchley.

Yours, JEEVES.

 

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The Prince and the Killer Courtesan - The Story of Marguerite Alibert

Marguerite Marie Alibert (9 December 1890 – 2 January 1971, also known as Maggie Meller, Marguerite Laurent, and Princess Fahmy, was a French socialite. She started her career as a prostitute and later courtesan in Paris, and from 1917 to 1918, she had an affair with the prince of Wales (later Edward VIII). After her marriage to Egyptian aristocrat Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey, she was frequently called princess by the media of the time. In 1923, she killed her husband at the Savoy Hotel in London. She was eventually acquitted of the murder charge after a trial at the Old Bailey.

 

Life

Marguerite Marie Alibert was born on 9 December 1890[1] in Paris to Firmin Alibert, a coachman, and Marie Aurand, a housekeeper. At age 16, she gave birth to a daughter, Raymonde. In the following eight to ten years, Alibert led a nomadic life until she met Mme Denant, who ran a Maison de Rendezvous, a brothel catering to a high society clientele. Under the tutelage of Denant, Alibert became a high-class sex worker.[1][5] Subsequently, Alibert had a number of notable clients, particularly Edward, Prince of Wales.

 

She and Edward first met in April 1917 at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris. At the time, he was in France as an officer of the Grenadier Guards in the Western Front during World War I. Edward became infatuated with her, and during their relationship, he wrote many candid letters to her. Although the affair was intense while it lasted, by the end of the war, Edward had ended the relationship.

 

Ali Fahmy Bey

Ali Fahmy Bey became infatuated with Alibert when he first encountered her in Egypt while she was escorting a businessman. He saw her again several times in Paris, and they were eventually formally introduced in July 1922. Following that meeting, they embarked on a tour of gambling and entertainment establishments in Deauville, Biarritz, and Paris. Fahmy returned to Egypt, but soon after, he invited her to the country, feigning illness and telling her that he could not live without her. They were married in December 1922 and had a formal Islamic wedding in January 1923.

 

Killing of Ali Fahmy

On 1 July 1923, the couple arrived in London for the holidays. They stayed at the Savoy Hotel with their entourage consisting of a secretary, a valet, and a maid.On 9 July, the couple and the secretary went to see the operetta The Merry Widow.[7][8] Upon returning to the hotel, they had a late supper where they started one of their frequent arguments. At 2:30 a.m. on 10 July, Alibert shot her husband repeatedly from behind, striking him in the neck, back, and head.[3][1] She used a .32 calibre semi-automatic Browning pistol.The victim was transported to Charing Cross Hospital but died of his wounds in about an hour.

 

Trial

The trial opened on Monday, 10 September 1923, with many people queuing to enter, including some who had waited since before daybreak. The trial lasted until Saturday, 15 September. During the trial, Alibert presented herself as the victim of the "brutality and beastliness" of her "oriental husband". Alibert was defended by Edward Marshall Hall, one of the more famous British lawyers of that era.[3] The trial judge disallowed any mention of Alibert's past as a courtesan, ensuring that the name of the Prince of Wales never was mentioned as part of the evidence during the trial. At the same time, Fahmy was described as "a monster of Eastern depravity and decadence, whose sexual tastes were indicative of an amoral sadism towards his helpless European wife". Alibert was acquitted of all charges.

 

Post-trial

After the trial, Alibert sued her late husband's family aiming to lay claim to his property. A court in Egypt rejected the verdict at the Old Bailey and dismissed her claim. She lived in an apartment facing the Ritz in Paris until the end of her life. After her death, the few remaining letters from Edward, which she had kept as insurance, were found and destroyed by a friend.

 

In culture

Books

The killing of Alibert's husband was the focus of the 1991 book, Scandal at the Savoy: The Infamous 1920s Murder Case by judge and historian Andrew Rose. In the 2013 follow-on work, The Prince, the Princess and the Perfect Murder, Andrew Rose revealed — with the help of Alibert's grandson — that the acquittal of Alibert of the charges of murdering her husband was part of a deal for returning the love letters of the Prince of Wales to him and a guarantee by Alibert that Edward's name would not be mentioned in court. Rose stated: "Really this was a show trial, the authorities wanted Marguerite to be acquitted. A murder conviction would have been catastrophic for the Crown."

 

The story of Alibert is retold in the 2022 debut novel, The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page, as told by the character Mrs. B., a former spy, to the keeper of stories, her cleaner, Janice; Alibert is given the alias Becky. This is clarified in the Author's Note found on page 375 of the paperback version.

 

Television

The trial was dramatised as part of the Granada TV series Lady Killers, broadcast on 20th July 1980, starring Robert Stephens and Barbara Kellerman.

 

In 2013, the UK Channel 4 aired the documentary Edward VIII's Murderous Mistress: Was there a cover-up of Edward VIII's fling with a murderess?

 

In November 2024, Channel 4 broadcast A History of Royal Scandals series 2 episode 4 entitled Crime in which Suzannah Lipscomb discussed Alibert's relationship with Edward, Prince of Wales, her trial for the shooting of husband Ali Fahmy, and the influence of authorities to ensure Alibert's acquittal.

 

Radio

The trial of Marguerite Alibert for the murder of Ali Fahmy Bey was presented in a 2023 episode of the BBC Radio 4 series Lucy Worsley's Lady Killers.

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Trump’s Vision of a Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac Upends an American Ideal

 

critic’s notebook

Trump’s Vision of a Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac Upends an American Ideal

 

President Trump’s “demolish first, ask questions later” approach highlights a tension involved in a bipartisan desire to streamline the building process.

 

Michael Kimmelman

By Michael Kimmelman

Nov. 8, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/arts/design/east-wing-ballroom-trump.html

 

President Trump is gunning to be the nation’s redecorator-in-chief.

 

He gilded the Oval Office, paved the Rose Garden and held up a grapefruit-size model of an “Arc de Trump” to face the Lincoln Memorial. In October, he issued “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” an executive order reviving a first Trump term initiative.

 

Even as Trump tried to cut food assistance during the shutdown, he showed off the new marble bathroom he designed for the Lincoln bedroom the other day.

 

But his biggest move, provoking bipartisan shock, was unleashing the wrecking balls without warning on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to make room for a behemoth ballroom.

 

Republicans and Democrats don’t see eye to eye about much today. But they seem to agree on the nation’s need to build things again by cutting through the mountains of red tape that federal, state and local governments have accrued to offset unchecked, top-down authority figures from bygone days, like Robert Moses, New York City’s omnipotent planning czar.

 

Moses’s imperial excesses and ruthlessness contributed to a cultural shift in America during the 1970s. The pendulum swung from the Powers That Be toward People Power.

 

Now President Trump’s “demolish first, ask questions later” approach to the East Wing highlights the unresolved tension involved in any push to get stuff done by streamlining checks and balances: How can this be accomplished without nudging the pendulum too far back in the other direction?

 

First saying the ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building,” Mr. Trump in October suddenly razed the White House East Wing, recalling an incident from his “Bonfire of the Vanities” days in New York.

 

In 1979, Bonwit Teller, the Fifth Avenue department store, was hemorrhaging cash. It put up for sale its midrise limestone-and-granite home designed by Warren & Wetmore, the same architects who gave the city Grand Central Terminal.

 

Mr. Trump, a 33-year-old real estate developer at the time, bought the building for $15 million. His plan was to tear it down and erect Trump Tower. Mr. Trump promised he would save and donate some prized limestone friezes on the facade that the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted, if the works could be safely removed at a reasonable cost.

 

Then the jackhammers arrived, unannounced, pulverizing the decorative friezes along with some intricate Art Deco grillwork and provoking an avalanche of headlines. Mr. Trump dismissed the criticism, insisting the friezes were worthless, despite what the Met’s art experts said, and proclaimed the blowback a “fantastic promotion” for his glassy, gaudy apartment tower.

 

There was a footnote to the story. Mr. Trump’s demolition crew, a mix of Polish Americans and undocumented immigrants, filed suit because of “horrid and terrible” working conditions. After 15 years of litigation, Mr. Trump paid to settle the case.

 

Today, he has yet to lay out a clear design plan for the capital. He’s tinkering and trolling. The other day, he instructed federal workers to paint the Kennedy Center’s gold columns white. That particular shade of gold, Mr. Trump explained to followers on Truth Social, was “fake looking.” He called the new color he selected a “luxuriant white enamel.”

 

A paint job can always be undone, unlike the East Wing demolition, which upset preservationists and architectural historians less because the beloved architecture it destroyed was exceptional — the wing wasn’t Jefferson’s Monticello — than because it underscored the president’s contempt for precedent and guardrails.

 

In response, Mr. Trump fired members of an independent commission established by Congress in 1910 to review architectural changes in the capital.

 

But polls indicate he may have overstepped.

 

Americans, millions of whom harbor fond memories of entering the People’s House on public tours that started at the East Wing, say they’re unhappy with the demolition. That includes a majority of independents and many Republicans, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll at the end of October, echoing earlier surveys. It showed 56 percent of Americans oppose the demolition. Only 28 percent support it.

 

Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., Kennedy, the list goes on: Many presidents have taken turns remodeling one or another part of the presidential grounds, often inciting political backlash. President Harry S. Truman gutted and rebuilt much of the White House interior during the 1950s.

 

Today, the White House may well need a larger ballroom for state dinners. Mr. Trump is within his rights to replace the East Wing with one, although whether demolition was required we may never know, because we now have only the word of Mr. Trump, who called in the bulldozers before independent reviewers could evaluate the scene.

 

His administration has yet to release details for the ballroom. Its rising price tag has now reached $300 million. The New York Times reported this week that Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is looking into undisclosed donations after the Trump administration promised transparency.

 

As for the design, we’ll see if it’s as banal as vague renderings suggest. But to judge from a model of the proposed White House that the president displayed in the Oval Office, the project would upend history, giving the lie to an architectural metaphor that Americans have humble-bragged about for more than 200 years.

 

It’s part of American lore that George Washington rebuffed proposals for a presidential palace. He believed a fledgling democracy shouldn’t emulate Versailles. America is not an imperial power like Britain. The White House is a representation in sandstone and brick of an Everyman’s American dream.

 

Trading Washington’s idealism for a Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac makes plain that we are no longer that America — and that we haven’t been for a long time. Staging state dinners in pop-up tents with portable heaters on the South Lawn, as presidents have been doing for decades absent a bigger ballroom, played into an architectural paradigm of a nation of equals.

 

But who was it still fooling?

 

An immense ballroom will tip the balanced, Neoclassical scales of the White House toward architectural inequality and gilt. During Mr. Trump’s first term, I wrote about his earlier executive order, from 2020, which demanded more traditional, classical styles of architecture for federal buildings.

 

It suggested that acanthus leaves and Ionic columns on courthouses and embassies would better represent the popular taste and will of the American people. But classicism is, at heart, about compositional poise, rationalism and proportion, not columns.

 

For decades, the United States has exercised its soft power around the world by constructing diverse works of architecture, modernist and otherwise, which, good and bad, told the world that America remained committed to innovation and freedom.

 

The Washington that Mr. Trump envisions leaving behind, with its luxuriant white columns, marbled bathrooms, triumphal arch and giant gilded White House ballroom, will tell another story about us.

 

In many ways, it is who we already are.

 

A correction was made on Nov. 8, 2025: An earlier version of this article misidentified the structure that President Trump’s proposed arch would face. It is the Lincoln Memorial, not the Jefferson Memorial.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

 

Michael Kimmelman is The Times’s architecture critic and the founder and editor-at-large of Headway, a team of journalists focused on large global challenges and paths to progress. He has reported from more than 40 countries and was previously chief art

“Bloodlines, Billionaires & Betrayal: The John Magnier & Aidan O’Brien Story”

Magnier was born in Fermoy, County Cork, the eldest son of Thomas Magnier (1909–1962) a County Cork landowner. His aunt Mary Elizabeth Hallinan married Rupert Watson, 3rd Baron Manton, Senior Steward of the Jockey Club 1982–1985.

 

Magnier received his formal education at Glenstal Abbey in County Limerick but had to leave school at 15 to take charge of the family estate near Fermoy after his father died.

 

Magnier later moved to County Tipperary, where he helped transform Coolmore Stud into a multi-million-euro international business. The business is headquartered in County Tipperary where a number of other stud farms are part of an extensive network which includes Longfield and Castlehyde studs. The operation also has branches in Versailles, Kentucky and at Jerrys Plains, New South Wales, Australia.

 

Magnier began his association with Coolmore in partnership with his father-in-law and champion racehorse trainer, Vincent O'Brien, and Vernon's Pools magnate, Robert Sangster. They developed successful racing horses and breeding stock, mainly by purchasing the progeny of the Canadian stallion Northern Dancer. Eventually, Magnier came to head the operation. His racing empire is nowadays powered by blue-blooded thoroughbreds trained at Ballydoyle by Aidan O'Brien, plus many others in the care of other trainers.

 

Champion sires to have stood at Coolmore include Sadler's Wells who was leading sire (by prizemoney won) in Great Britain and Ireland in 14 of the 15 years between 1990 and 2004, though his success in his later years was eclipsed by three other Coolmore stallions, namely Danehill and his own sons Galileo and Montjeu. Other notable Group 1 winners who have turned successfully to stud duties are Danehill Dancer, Giant's Causeway, and Epsom Derby winner High Chaparral.

 

Less successful at Coolmore was George Washington, winner of the 2,000 Guineas and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes in 2006. George Washington proved infertile, was returned to racing, and suffered a fatal breakdown in the 2007 Breeders' Cup Classic. George Washington was replaced at stud by another son of Danehill, Holy Roman Emperor, removed from training at the start of his three-year-old season. Eleven of the fifteen winners of The Derby between 1998 and 2012 were sired by Coolmore stallions (High Estate, Fairy King, Grand Lodge, Sadler's Wells (two), Danehill, Montjeu (four) and Galileo

Aidan Patrick O'Brien (born 16 October 1969 in County Wexford, Ireland) is an Irish horse racing trainer. Since 1996, he has been the private trainer at Ballydoyle Stables near Rosegreen in County Tipperary for John Magnier and his Coolmore Stud associates. He is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest horse racing trainers of all time.

 

Early and private life

Aidan O'Brien was one of six children of Denis O'Brien (died 1 December 2008) and his wife Stella (née Doyle). Denis was a farmer and small-scale horse trainer in the townland of Killegney, near Poulpeasty, in County Wexford, where Aidan grew up.

 

Aidan O'Brien attended Donard National School, located less than a mile from his parents' home. He subsequently attended secondary school at Good Counsel College, New Ross, also located in County Wexford. O'Brien is a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, meaning that he does not drink alcohol.

 

O'Brien first started working professionally with horses at P.J. Finn's racing stables at the Curragh, County Kildare, and then with Jim Bolger at Coolcullen, County Carlow.

 

Aidan O'Brien is married to Anne-Marie (née Crowley). Anne-Marie's father, Joe Crowley trained horses at Piltown, County Kilkenny, where his tenure was interrupted in quick succession by his daughter Anne-Marie (Champion National Hunt Trainer during her brief time at the helm), his son-in-law Aidan O'Brien (who took over from his wife in 1993 but moved on to Ballydoyle in 1996) and then another daughter, Frances Crowley (who moved on to train on the Curragh for some years). Joe then renewed his own training licence for some years before retiring.

 

 Aidan O'Brien at the 2012 Epsom Derby

Aidan O’Brien was champion Irish National Hunt trainer in the 1993/4 season and went on to lift the title for the next 5 consecutive seasons. His most successful horse during this time was the famed Istabraq. In 1996 he was approached by John Magnier to train at Ballydoyle. For a number of years he retained his Piltown yard.

 

O'Brien and Anne-Marie have four children, with Joseph, Sarah, Anastasia and Donnacha all jockeys. Joseph became apprenticed to his father and rode his first winner shortly after his sixteenth birthday, on Johann Zoffany at Leopardstown on 28 May 2009. In 2012 O'Brien and Joseph, 19, became the first father-son/trainer-jockey combination to win The Derby, with Camelot. As of 2024, Aidan O'Brien is the most successful Epsom Derby trainer of all time with 10 wins. (...)

The Rake on Parade: The Yearlings at Highclere Stud

The Story Of The Real Downtown Abbey | High Stakes At Highclere | Timeline

High Stakes At Highclere (1996) - Snapshot of life in the 90's at the setting for Downton Abbey

This Documentary was made before the “miracle” of Downton Abbey saved  the  Castle.

By 2009, the castle was in dire need of major repair, with only the ground and first floors remaining usable. Water damage had caused stonework to crumble and ceilings to collapse; at least 50 rooms were uninhabitable. The 8th Earl and his family were living in a "modest cottage in the grounds"; he said his ancestors were responsible for the castle's long term problems. As of 2009, repairs needed for the entire estate were estimated to cost around £12 million, £1.8 million of which was urgently needed just for the castle.

As of late 2012, Lord and Lady Carnarvon have stated that a dramatic increase in the number of paying visitors has allowed them to begin major repairs on both Highclere's turrets and its interior. The family attributes this increase in interest to the on-site filming of Downton Abbey. The family now live in Highclere during the winter months, but return to their cottage in the summer, when the castle is open to the public

Downton Abbey – 10 Shocking Behind-the-Scenes Secrets!

The Butler ...

A butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its appearance. A butler is usually male, and in charge of male servants, while a housekeeper is usually a woman, and in charge of female servants. Traditionally, male servants (such as footmen) were rarer and therefore better paid and of higher status than female servants. The butler, as the senior male servant, has the highest servant status.
In modern houses where the butler is the most senior worker, titles such as majordomo, butler administrator, house manager, manservant, staff manager, chief of staff, staff captain, estate manager and head of household staff are sometimes given. The precise duties of the employee will vary to some extent in line with the title given, but perhaps more importantly in line with the requirements of the individual employer. In the grandest homes or when the employer owns more than one residence, there is sometimes an estate manager of higher rank than the butler.

The word "butler" comes from the Old French bouteleur (cup bearer), from bouteille (bottle), and ultimately from Latin. The role of the butler, for centuries, has been that of the chief steward of a household, the attendant entrusted with the care and serving of wine and other bottled beverages which in ancient times might have represented a considerable portion of the household's assets.In Britain, the butler was originally a middle-ranking member of the staff of a grand household. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the butler gradually became the senior, usually male, member of a household's staff in the very grandest households. However, there was sometimes a steward who ran the outside estate and financial affairs, rather than just the household, and who was senior to the butler in social status into the 19th century. Butlers used to always be attired in a special uniform, distinct from the livery of junior servants, but today a butler is more likely to wear a business suit or business casual clothing and appear in uniform only on special occasions.A Silverman or Silver Butler has expertise and professional knowledge of the management, secure storage, use and cleaning of all silverware, associated tableware and other paraphernalia for use at military and other special functions

Butlers were head of a strict service hierarchy and therein held a position of power and respect. They were more managerial than "hands on"—more so than serving, they officiated in service. For example, although the butler was at the door to greet and announce the arrival of a formal guest, the door was actually opened by a footman, who would receive the guest's hat and coat. Even though the butler helped his employer into his coat, this had been handed to him by a footman. However, even the highest-ranking butler would "pitch in" when necessary, such as during a staff shortage, to ensure that the household ran smoothly, although some evidence suggests this was so even during normal times.

The household itself was generally divided into areas of responsibility. The butler was in charge of the dining room, the wine cellar, pantry, and sometimes the entire main floor. Directly under the butler was the first footman (or head footman), who was also deputy butler or under-butler that would fill in as butler during the butler's illness or absence. The footman—there were frequently numerous young men in the role within a household—performed a range of duties including serving meals, attending doors, carrying or moving heavy items, and they often doubled as valets. Valets themselves performed a variety of personal duties for their employer. Butlers engaged and directed all these junior staff and each reported directly to him. The housekeeper was in charge of the house as a whole and its appearance. In a household without an official head housekeeper, female servants and kitchen staff were also directly under the butler's management, while in smaller households, the butler usually doubled as valet. Employers and their children and guests addressed the butler by last name alone; fellow servants, retainers, and tradespersons as "Mr. [Surname]".

Butlers were typically hired by the master of the house but usually reported to its lady. Beeton in her manual suggested a GBP 25 - 50 (USD 2,675 - 5,350) per-year salary for butlers; room and board and livery clothing were additional benefits, and tipping known as vails, were common. The few butlers who were married had to make separate housing arrangements for their families, as did all other servants within the hierarchy.

Beginning around the early 1920s (following World War I), employment in domestic service occupations began a sharp overall decline in western European countries, and even more markedly in the United States. Even so, there were still around 30,000 butlers employed in Britain by World War II. As few as one hundred were estimated to remain by the mid-1980s. Social historian Barry Higman argues that a high number of domestic workers within a society correlates with a high level of socio-economic inequality. Conversely, as a society undergoes levelling among its social classes, the number employed in domestic service declines.

Following varied shifts and changes accompanying accelerated globalisation beginning in the late 1980s, overall global demand for butlers since the turn of the millennium has risen dramatically. According to Charles MacPherson, vice chairman of the International Guild of Professional Butlers, the proximate cause is that the number of millionaires and billionaires has increased in recent years, and such people are finding that they desire assistance in managing their households. MacPherson emphasises that the number of wealthy people in China have increased particularly, creating in that country a high demand for professional butlers who have been trained in the European butlering tradition. There is also increasing demand for such butlers in other Asian countries, India, and the petroleum-rich Middle East.

Higman additionally argues that the inequality/equality levels of societies are a major determinant of the nature of the domestic servant/employer relationship. As the 21st century approached, many butlers began carrying out an increasing number of duties formerly reserved for more junior household servants. Butlers today may be called upon to do whatever household and personal duties their employers deem fitting, in the goal of freeing their employers to carry out their own personal and professional affairs. Professional butler and author Steven M. Ferry states that the image of tray-wielding butlers who specialise in serving tables and decanting wine is now anachronistic, and that employers may well be more interested in a butler who is capable of managing a full array of household affairs—from providing the traditional dinner service, to acting as valet, to managing high-tech systems and multiple homes with complexes of staff. While in truly grand houses the modern butler may still function exclusively as a top-ranked household affairs manager, in lesser homes, such as those of dual-income middle-class professionals, they perform a full array of household and personal assistant duties, including mundane housekeeping. Butlers today may also be situated within corporate settings, embassies, cruise ships, yachts, or within their own small "Rent-a-Butler" business or similar agency.

Along with these changes of scope and context, butlering attire has changed. Whereas butlers have traditionally worn a special uniform that separated them from junior servants, and although this is still often the case, butlers today may wear more casual clothing geared for climate, while exchanging it for formal business attire only upon special service occasions. There are cultural distinctions, as well. In the United States, butlers may frequently don a polo shirt and slacks, while in Bali they typically wear sarongs.

In 2007, the number of butlers in Britain had risen to an estimated 5,000.

Butlers traditionally learned their position while progressing their way up the service ladder. For example, in the documentary The Authenticity of Gosford Park, retired butler Arthur Inch (born 1915) describes starting as a hall boy. While this is still often the case, numerous private butlering schools exist today, such as The British Butler Institute, the International Institute of Modern Butlers, the Guild of Professional English Butlers, and The International Guild of Butlers & Household Managers; top graduates can start at US$50,000-60,000 (£25,350-30,400). Additionally, major up-market hotels such as the Ritz-Carlton offer traditional butler training, while some hotels have trained a sort of pseudo-butler for service in defined areas such as "technology butlers", who fix guests' computers and other electronic devices, and "bath butlers" who draw custom baths.

Starkey International distinguishes between the "British butler" prototype and its American counterpart, often dubbed the "household manager". Starkey states that they train and promote the latter, believing that Americans do not have the "servant mentality" that is part of the British Butler tradition[citation needed]. They stress that their American-style butlers and valets are educated and certified, Starkey does lay claim to understanding the British butler tradition; however, her general approach seems to be that American domestic staff are better suited to American families although some students, numerous former Starkey employees, and several wealthy clients have criticised the programme and its owner. Magnums Butlers, a school based in Australia, conducts training after the British model at sites in Asia and the Pacific, Australia, the United Kingdom and the Middle East. The International Institute of Modern Butlers provides on-site training in various places around the world as well as via correspondence. In 2007, City & Guilds, the U.K.'s largest awarder of vocational credentials, introduced a diploma programme for butlers.

In addition to formal training, a few books have been published recently to assist butlers in their duties, including Arthur Inch's and Arlene Hirst's 2003 Dinner is Served. Moreover, websites, as well as a news publication, Modern Butlers' Journal, help butlers to network and keep abreast of developments within their field.

Ferry argues that what he calls a "butler mindset" is beneficial to all people within all professions. He states that an attitude of devoted service to others, deference, and the keeping of confidences can help all people succeed.

‘I knew I needed help. I knew it was over’ / alcoholism, anger, Academy Awards – and 50 years of sobriety

 

‘I knew I needed help. I knew it was over’

alcoholism, anger, Academy Awards – and 50 years of sobriety

Anthony Hopkins

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2025/nov/03/i-knew-i-needed-help-i-knew-it-was-over-anthony-hopkins-on-alcoholism-anger-academy-awards-and-50-years-of-sobriety

 

The big interview

‘I knew I needed help. I knew it was over’: Anthony Hopkins on alcoholism, anger, Academy Awards – and 50 years of sobriety

As the actor approaches his 90th year and publishes an autobiography, he reflects on his early years on stage, being inspired by Laurence Olivier, becoming a Hollywood star and conquering his demons

 

Steve Rose

Mon 3 Nov 2025 05.00 GMT

 

‘What’s the weather like over there?” asks Anthony Hopkins as soon as our video call begins. He may have lived in California for decades but some Welshness remains, in his distinctive, mellifluous voice – perhaps a little hoarser than it once was – and his preoccupation with the climate. It’s a dark evening in London but a bright, sunny morning in Los Angeles, and Hopkins is equally bright in demeanour and attire, sporting a turquoise and green shirt. “I came here 50 years ago. Somebody said: ‘Are you selling out?’ I said: ‘No, I just like the climate and to get a suntan.’ But I like Los Angeles. I’ve had a great life here.”

 

It hasn’t been all that great recently, actually. In January this year, Hopkins’ house in Pacific Palisades was destroyed by the wildfires. “It was a bit of a calamity,” he says, with almost cheerful understatement. “We’re thankful that no one was hurt, and we got our cats and our little family into the clear.” He wasn’t there at the time; he and his wife, Stella, were in Saudi Arabia, where he was hosting a concert of his own music played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. They’re now in a rented house in the nearby neighbourhood of Brentwood. “We lost everything, but you think: ‘Oh well, at least we are alive.’ I feel sorry for the thousands of people who have been really affected. People who were way past retirement age, and had worked hard over the years and now … nothing.”

 

Hopkins will be 88 this December, but clearly doesn’t consider himself past retirement age. As a two-time Oscar-winner, a knight of the realm, a fixture of pop culture and one of the most revered actors alive, he has an embarrassment of laurels to rest on, but there’s still plenty on his schedule. He’s just finished a movie with Guy Ritchie, for whom he has a newfound admiration – “He’s precise in what he wants to see” – and he’s coming back to Britain soon, he says, to make a new movie with Richard Eyre (The Housekeeper, about Daphne du Maurier), then another one in Wales.

 

Nor is he too old to move with the times. On a recent Instagram video, he put on one of Kim Kardashian’s much-ridiculed Skims face wraps and channelled Hannibal Lecter. “Hello, Kim. I’m already feeling 10 years younger,” he announces to the camera, followed by Lecter’s trademark sinister lisping-slurping action. “Fun, wasn’t it?” he says, laughing. Kardashian told him she thought it was hilarious, he says.

 

But recently Hopkins has also been looking back, too – at his whole life. His new memoir, We Did OK, Kid, is far from your stereotypical luvvie memoir, partly because Hopkins is far from your typical luvvie – even if he does cross paths with past greats such as Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn and Richard Burton – but mainly because he’s surprisingly upfront about his often troubled early life. When he describes his childhood in the Welsh town of Port Talbot, the only son of a family of bakers, it feels like a different planet. “My father had that attitude: stop whining, stop complaining, you don’t know what you’re talking about, stand up straight, get on with it!” His father was also prone to depression and anxiety, Hopkins says. It was wartime and postwar Britain; life was just like that.

 

By his own account, the young Hopkins comes across as a bit of a loner and an oddball. He had few friends, was frequently bullied and wouldn’t even go to his own birthday parties. He showed so little promise at school, one teacher told him he was “a brainless carthorse”. “I was living in my imagination, my dream world, I suppose,” he says. “I couldn’t understand anything intellectually or academically and that drove me into a kind of loneliness and resentment.” He retreated behind a mask of insolence, “a tough stance and a cold remoteness”, and that became his identity. Perhaps, in a way, he was already acting?

 

“Yes, yes, I think I was,” he says. “The only way I could protect myself was, if I got a slap across the head from a school teacher, I’d stare them out and I’d defy them. I wouldn’t react at all.” You can almost picture a young Hannibal Lecter doing the same.

 

His despairing parents had all but written him off, but he told them: “One day, I’ll show you,” he says. “I discovered that I had one small gift: I could remember things.” He was an avid reader, and easily retained facts, figures, whole poems and speeches from plays.

 

An early epiphany in terms of acting was seeing Olivier’s film adaptation of Hamlet at school in 1949, when he was 12. “I was shocked by my reaction,” he says. “I don’t know what it was about that, but it made such a punch in my head, hearing Shakespeare for the first time.” He started memorising speeches from Hamlet and Julius Caesar. His parents were amazed. (Decades later, his father, on his deathbed, asked Hopkins to recite Hamlet for him.)

 

Hopkins even goes as far as wondering if he has Asperger’s or some other form of autism. As well as his memory, he details behaviour such as repeating words obsessively and a “lack of emotionality”. He has never sought a professional assessment. “My wife, Stella, she diagnosed me. She said: ‘Well, you’re obsessive. Everything has to be laid out perfectly.’ I have to have everything arranged. So that’s a little twist in the brain, I suppose. But I’m quite happy with whatever inner disturbance I have.”

 

Hopkins’ memory is the foundation of his acting, he says. He reads his scripts 100 or 200 times, so every line is etched into his memory before he turns up on set. It started as a protection mechanism when he was a young actor, but it’s become his technique. “That was my gift, really: to know the part so well that I had no fear. Once you know the script, you have a relaxation to go on stage in rehearsal, so you can hear the other person. The art of acting, I think, is to be able to listen.”

 

In 1964, 15 years after being transfixed by Olivier’s Hamlet, Hopkins found himself auditioning in front of the man himself to join London’s National Theatre (cheekily, he did Othello, a role Olivier had recently made his own, albeit in blackface). He considers Olivier his mentor. “He gave me this huge break in my life. He seemed to admire my physical strength, because I had that in me, and I had this sense of Welsh danger, you know, quick-tempered.” He didn’t really get along with the English middle-class chumminess of the British theatre-world, though – the “kissy-smoochy-darling stuff”, as he puts it. “I’ve never felt comfortable with that.”

 

One area where he did find common ground – far too much of it – was alcohol. “Drinking was a family tradition,” he says. It was a theatre tradition, too. This was the era of “angry young men” epitomised by John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (Hopkins had been riveted seeing Peter O’Toole’s version in 1957), and of legendary, hard-drinking “hell-raisers” like O’Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton and Richard Harris. Did he fit that description?

 

“Yes, yes, I did. I would not be trusted, and I would have fights and quarrel with, especially, directors. Looking back, it’s all paranoia. They were trying to do their job; I was trying to do mine, but I couldn’t take any … it wasn’t criticism, I couldn’t take any authoritative bullying. So I’d lash out.” He would often get into physical fights in pubs, too.

 

The week before Hopkins’ first marriage, to fellow actor Petronella Barker in 1966, he impulsively quit the National because of one such director, declaring he was giving up acting. He recalls his colleagues getting sloshed at the wedding reception then heading off to perform in the afternoon matinee. He used to do the same. “Oh yeah, it was terrible. You used to be on stage and not know where you were or why you were there, adding 10 minutes to the play.”

 

It was just the done thing, he says. “Yeah, we are rebels. We can fight. Who cares about the establishment? When you’re growing up, it’s healthy to want to punch out and be rebellious and survive. And it was a bit of fun, I thought. But I remember thinking one day: ‘Yeah, and it’s going to kill you as well.’”

 

It certainly took many of his contemporaries. By the mid-70s, even as his career was going places, Hopkins’ drinking and heavy smoking were taking a toll on his health – and his relationships. In 1969, after two years of marriage marked by rows, depression and a lot of whisky, he walked out on Barker and their one-year-old daughter, Abigail. He describes it as “the saddest fact of my life, and my greatest regret, and yet I feel absolutely sure that it would have been much worse for everyone if I’d stayed”. He and Barker divorced in 1972.

 

The real wake-up call came in December 1975, in LA. He woke up one morning to find his car missing, and called his agent to tell him. “Nobody stole it,” his agent replied. “We found you on the road.” Hopkins had driven all night from Arizona to Beverly Hills, about 500 miles, blackout drunk. “I was insane, I was nuts, I couldn’t remember half the journey,” he says. “And that’s a deadly way to live, because I didn’t care about myself. I could have taken out an entire family … I knew I needed help, I knew it was over.”

 

The way he narrates it, a literal voice in his head asked him if he wanted to live or die. He replied: “‘I want to live,’ and the voice said, ‘It’s all over now. You can start living.’” He went straight to Alcoholics Anonymous. Afterwards, “I got out on the street, 11am, 29 December 1975, and everything looked different. Everything seemed sunnier, everything seemed more … benign. No threat in the air.”

 

He doesn’t go as far as to claim it was God that spoke to him, but it was “a moment of clarity”, he says, “from deep inside here [he points to his head] or here [he points to his heart].” He has never craved a drink since. “We all have that power within us, and we choose our lives and navigate through that kind of … inspiration, I suppose it is.”

 

By this stage Hopkins was living and working more and more in the US, and in cinema. “I just wanted some sunshine, and I didn’t want to be standing around in wrinkled tights holding a spear for the rest of my life,” he jokes. It was his hero O’Toole who had first coaxed him on to a movie set, in 1968. He knocked on Hopkins’ dressing room door at the National one day and said, “I want you to do a test for me,” Hopkins says. “He’d had a few jars, and we went to the pub afterwards.”