They Also Serve

Praise for Lives of the Servants: Reading this fascinating book is likely to unleash almost anyone s Inner Bolshevik !' Daily Mail ...a fascinating portrait of the drudgery and servility of a domestic's life.' The Age ...captures the subtleties of the English class system to an extraordinary degree.' Midstate Observer 'If the Brothers Grimm had ended Cinderella where she was being forced to clean the house by her stepsisters, they might have accidentally been writing Rose Plummer's biography. The maid's story makes for harsh, heartbreaking, fascinating reading. The Daily Telegraph, NZ During more than thirty years in a variety of houses Bob Sharpe managed to rise from garden boy to valet and butler. As a gentleman s gentleman he saw the extraordinary sexual antics of the rich He cleaned shoes, ironed underwear and socks, but as a butler he was the best paid servant in the house, waited on, feared and respected by the other servants. Bob knew the real world of upstairs downstairs and the secrets of the landed gentry even to the point of incest and attempted murder!