Hugely enjoyable ... a richly textured account of what it felt like to spend the decades of high modernity on your knees with a dustpan and brush ... an excellent addition to the history of domestic service in the 20th century ... Where Servants excels is in describing those placed where the older paradigms of domestic service, inherited from the late 19th century, began to break down
Kathryn Hughes
Guardian
Delightfully well-written ... scrupulously even-handed ... Hats off to Lethbridge for so touchingly and comprehensively chronicling those lives that history, like the snootiest of employers, has neglected for so long
Craig Brown
The Mail on Sunday
Glorious ... Full of eyebrow-raising and laughter-inducing vignettes. But what is most fascinating is Lethbridge’s account of the dark side of the master-servant relationship
Daily Telegraph
Beautifully written, sparkling with insight, and a pleasure to read, Servants is social history at its most humane and perceptive. In broad terms, the world Lethbridge describes is a familiar one, but she nails it all down with the kind of detail that still has the power to astonish, outrage or amuse
Times Literary Supplement
Scholarly, thorough and vastly entertaining ... Lethbridge's style is elegant, detached and slyly witty, and her canvas sprawling and immense
Financial Times
Enthusiasts of bonnets and waistcoats will find Upstairs Downstairs or Downton Abbey all the more enjoyable after reading this nuanced and elegantly written account of the wider context. And in tracing the history of servants throughout the whole of the 20th century, Lethbridge offers a new vantage point from which to reassess British social history
Lara Feigel
Observer
Humane, perceptive and dispassionate, Servants takes us more deeply and comprehensively than any previous account into the real world of Upstairs Downstairs
David Kynaston Absorbing ... Lethbridge enables us to hear the voices of her subjects; she skilfully interweaves written and oral testimony ... Empathetic, wide-ranging and well-written
Spectator
Engrossing
Sunday Telegraph
Enlightening and elegantly written social history
Joy Lo Dico
Independent on Sunday
Enthralling ... Lethbridge shows that the history of life below stairs is just as interesting as the story of life above them
Tatler
Excellent social history ... Anyone who longs to believe Downton Abbey’s comforting portrayal of life below stairs will emerge from its pages disabused of such sentimental notions
Daily Mail
Thoroughly researched and tremendously entertaining ... Illustrated with a host of terrific anecdotes
Sunday Times
Meticulously researched ... It makes a grand sweep, covering a rich swathe of social history which Lethbridge unpicks with delicacy, humanity and humour ... Lethbridge shows how complex and varied the relationship between servant and master could be
The Tablet
Comprehensively reached and charmingly engaging, Servants is a sensitive, humane and penetrating insight into British society
Western Morning News
Absorbing history ... Telling their story so fully and humanely
Economist
Fascinating
Independent
The stories are reminiscent of below-stairs life as depicted in TV’s Downton Abbey
Jewish Chronicle
Neither snobbish nor socialist, Lethbridge has produced a sympathetic and affectionate study, laced with invigorating anecdotes
Intelligent Life
By no means the standard Downton Abbey cash-in. Instead, a brilliantly researched and often eye-opening account of twentieth-century life below stairs
Reader's Digest
Excellent, thoroughly researched
Paul Bailey
The Oldie
Comprehensive
Good Book Guide