Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle [Hardcover]

I really enjoyed the extraordinary stories of the real people, upstairs and downstairs, you couldn't make it up! What a woman Almina was. It is part of the attraction of Downton Abbey, the sense of family, the house which holds so many different lives together. I loved all being taken through the Frist World War through the eyes and experiences of real people. A great read.

Fascinating book. Well written. She was an incredible woman in the way she was able to organise her life particularly in the use of Highclere for treating wounded soldiers from the Great War. 300 pages with interesting photographs, it could have done with a family tree because I became a bit confused on who was related to whom and how in the early stages. Thoroughly recommended whether or not you are have been follower of Downton Abbey.

This book is slick and has many glossy images. But as a comprehensive biography of Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon it's lacking in substance, facts seem to fall from the wind. Among the nice pictures about a dozen images are repeated from a previous Highclere hack entited " Carnarvon and Carter". Sadly, several of the Almina images aren't of Almina at all.

What irks is that it hardly amounts to Almina's half-life - and much of it is only half- told. And as the cut off point in time is 1924, the rest of Almina's life, of almost fifty years is abandoned. Almina's financial skulduggery, her offences against her own children and her carnal affairs (outlined in another recently published biography of the Countess) are, of course, not mentioned. Her relationship with Lord Carnarvon in this portrait lacks any kind of sure grasp of either personality. Both were complicated human beings. The Highclere ghost writer obviously could find nothing to say, and could not expose the truth that the parties were not in love or lovers and that they simply despised each other. Their near thirty-year marriage was the ultimate sham marriage.

There are some good elements to praise, individual soldiers' stories from Almina's term as the matron of Highclere Military Hospital and 48 Bryanston Square, a Royal Flying Corps hospital, during the Great War. It was noteworthy to read the names of a few of the surgeons who operated at Highclere and Bryanston Square hospitals. Whilst it was interesting-ish to read of the endless exploits of Carnarvon's half-sibling Aubrey and his wife Mary and the Dowager Elsie and the Burghcleres (Almina despised them all, except Aubrey, whom she loved and wanted instead of being saddled with the Earl), this alas greatly overshadows Almina's own story. The Highclere ghost writer slips in casual, matter of fact references about Almina here and there - when the narrative is already top heavy with these much lesser figures from her time period. For Downton fans there's dross on real life servants including one called Bates (a name of a servant also in the Abbey). That said, the insight into downstairs has merit. Almina spent long periods down in the servant's quarters at the start of her marriage- hiding from Lord Carnarvon - as she was so scared of him!!

The book is crammed with multiple fact fillers, which would be better in history books relating to the era, the Great War sagas or Tutankhamun but not in a biography of the Countess. The book skates over with frivolity (in a mere sentence) the important trip by the Carnarvons to America in 1903 and much else of importance is omitted. The narrative also replicates the monumental error of placing Lord Carnarvon's serious motor car accident in Germany EIGHT YEARS before it actually happened and citing this incorrectly as the catalyst for him first digging in Egypt.

Reference to Almina's personal staff including her secretary Mary Weekes is worthy and that of one Charles Clout - whom Mary married and it seems Almina acted as cupid. But these two people are bystanders. .

But where the book disappointed most iwas regarding evidence (and thus exposing the complete lack of it) on Alfred de Rothschild (the ghost writer irritating refers to him, as " Sir Alfred") as Almina's biological father. Here the official testimony offers NO evidence whatsoever to support Alfred as Almina's father, indeed the ghost writer declares ". the question of Almina's paternity can't be conclusively determined with any certainty...." Indeed, well how about a DNA test, then?

The man named on Almina's birth certificate as her father, Fred Wombwell (who might well have been Almina's real father), was a rakish figure, but the book sticks the knife in much further than justified - just to make sure Fred's memory is totally expunged - he's branded as a drunkard and a thief.

A much deeper slur on the Wombwells is that the book makes no reference to the loving relationship between Almina and her brother, also named Frederick Wombwell, a devoted sibling that she raised a memorial window to after his early death in 1912. This window (dedicated in 1913) is to be found at St Michael and All Angels Church, Highclere. Of course there's no mention of this in the book. Shame on them!

Another agonising stream throughout the book are the references to show Almina as the dutiful wife, and even more absurd, of her constantly nursing the 5th Earl and that it was this wife driven dedication that led to her taking up nursing as a vocation. That never happened. Almina rose to take up nursing to do something useful (it was her sole decision, after years of frustration as a show-wife) and to get out of the reaches of Carnarvon's hysteria and fretting about not being able to go to Egypt because of the Great War. The Earl had his male helpers, his valet, and physician. The book is a real missed chance at using sources inside Highclere.