Bonus points if you dress up like Carson. Negative points if you dress up like Thomas.
We all wish our dinner parties looked like this.
Source: mylekachris.blogspot.com
Instead of this.
Source: lishabornilla
And now they can! Because of this:
Career butler Stanley Ager wrote the book with the help of his former employer's grand daughter, Fiona St. Augyn. It was originally published in 1980 under a different name, then rereleased last year.
Source: news.providencejournal.com
It's a book on how to run a large, formal British household written by Stanley Ager, a British butler. Ager started his 53-year career in 1922 when he was 14 years old, and spent thirty years working for the family at St. Michael's Mount, a castle in Cornwall, England. He worked his way up from footman to head butler.
Now, maybe you don't need a guide to being a butler. But you do need a guide to throwing a Downton Abbey-era dinner party, and Ager's book delivers the goods. Plus, the introduction is written by the show's historical advisor. (And of course, the historian who works on Downton Abbey is named Alastair Bruce.)
Ager writes: "I believe that conversation is the essence of a party, what you eat and drink is the spice of it and a well-laid table hints of what is to come, like the wrapping on a present." Cool, let's try to replicate that attitude.
