'Recommended somewhere or other. The foreword in my edition was written by Julian Fellowes, the perfect person to write about a novel concerning a pre-war shooting party, it was obviously a great influence on Gosford Park and Downton Abbey. The absurdity, waste and boredom of the aristocratic lifestyle is recognised by both Fellowes and Colegate, but never seriously questioned - both lament a lost world that has passed, of civilisation, certainty and ritual. Fellowes unthinkingly at one stage talks of how domestic service was immensely beneficial to domestic servants, and that it was an act of benificence for landowners to employ and find a living for so many - an inversion of the reality of dozens of useful people having their talents and resources wasted to maintain one single person's gilded existence when they could have been doing so much more for society and themselves.
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