Summer Reading

My Book Report for the summer (so far) is on Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle.

Lady Almina, at the young age of 19 became the 5th Countess of Carnarvon, when she married George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert (wow - a lot of names for royalty).  Her new home was at Highclere Castle, which is featured in the British drama Downton Abbey.   This particular book was written by Lady Fiona Carnavaron, the current Countess.  The book is factual and historical and though interesting, I kept waiting for the war to start so that I could learn about the facts surrounding Lady Amina's decision to turn Highclere Castle into a hospital for injured WWI soldiers.  I wasn't compelled to finish it until about three quarters of the way through.  I was also fascinated to read about how the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, along with his friend Howard Carter, discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

Almina was a remarkable woman who had access to unlimited funds and spent it to help in the war effort by providing the wounded soldiers with the very best care, and treated them with the utmost respect.  I was most impressed with Almina's character, as is so evident in what Lady Fiona wrote (page 110-111) about her:

Almina's values and politics were very much those you would expect of a woman of her social class at the time and it would, of course, be overstating the case to say that she was a champion of women's rights.  She never voiced any support for women's suffrage.  Even so, some of her speeches give a very strong sense of her forceful personality, her wit and her faith in women's power to influence public life. She tells the Newbury Unionist Women's Association in January 1911: 'In the dark ages, which are not very far behind us, we used to be called the weaker sex.  We never were, and we never shall be weaker in our patriotism.  In this as in all similar matters we are neither inferior nor superior, but only very different and I am convinced that we shall do most good to our country and her cause if instead of imitating men we endeavor to widen and perhaps enrich the spirit of public life by being simply ourselves.'

I'd love to visit Highclere Castle someday!


Side note: Yes, I am working on sorting through the 100's of pictures from our trip to Canada.  The Olympics have been too compelling to watch and I haven't updated my blog in a long while.