Realism in car decals. Photo / Supplied
Looking through the class ceiling
With the film version of the TV series out later this year, historical novelist Robert Bennett had this to say about the escapist fantasy of Downton Abbey: "Really the point of the entire show was to let middle American viewers dabble in the lavish lives
and costumes of the Edwardian .001 per cent without feeling bad about what made that lifestyle possible.
"Anything that threatened that 'safari in the aristocracy' aspect — be it the realism of class warfare, or the actual, historical evolutions of the era that would have upended everything that happened — was quickly neutered and turned into quaint fluff. If you had asked for an eight-hour workday Lord Grantham would have jailed you in a shot and your family would have gone bankrupt." (Via @robertjbennett)
Hung out to dry
"Back in the early 1960s, I was a pupil in a private school," reminisces Linda Lang. "One day I was extremely humiliated to be called up in front of assembly and accused of smoking outside the local dairy. This was an even bigger sin than eating on the street. I denied this, but in those days you didn't argue with teachers, or for that matter any adult.
