By the Countess of CarnarvonHere's a good book to follow up Below Stairs. Almina was the daughter of a very wealthy French Jewish financier, Alfred de Rothschild, and Mrs Marie Wombwell, a French beauty married to an English drunkard. (Apparently these kinds of relationships were considered pretty normal among the wealthy classes.) Raised in gentility, Almina was the perfect wife to George Herbert, the 5th Lord Carnarvon, finding joy in hosting large parties at Highclere and their other properties, founding a very efficient hospital during the Great War, and accompanying her husband on many trips to Egypt,where Lord Carnarvon financed Howard Carter's excavation of King Tut's tomb in 1922. Well written, and a good window into life in a war hospital.
Highclere, the Carnarvon' estate, is the setting for Downton Abbey.
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