Diamonds at Dinner: My Life as a Lady's Maid in a 1930s Stately Home

by Hilda Newman and Tim Tate

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The year was 1935: the twilight of the English aristocracy. It was a time of wealth and glamour; of lavish balls and evening gowns; of tiaras and a Coronation. As personal maid to Lady Coventry, Hilda had a unique insight into the leisured life of one of Britain's most noble families. In her fascinating memoir of life upstairs and down, Hilda takes us back to a gilded era which would be brutally swept away by the Second World War. Hers is a very personal story of being transplanted from a tiny house with no bath or hot water to an eighteenth-century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by parkland landscaped by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown. But it is also the remarkable story of the family whose service she entered - and that of Croome Court itself: during World War Two, it housed the Dutch Royal Family - who had fled the Nazi occupation - and it was also home to the top-secret RAF base where radar was developed. This is Hilda's story.
  • ISBN10 1782197842
  • ISBN13 9781782197843
  • Publish Date 1 April 2014 (first published 1 January 2013)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Blake Publishing
  • Format eBook
  • Pages 272
  • Language English