They Also Serve: The Real Life Story of a Lifetime in Service as a Butler (Lives of Servants)

During more than thirty years in a variety of houses, Bob Sharpe managed to rise from garden boy to valet and butler.

As a boy he had to kill pheasant chicks, boil rabbits for the estate dogs, carry the wood up and down stairs every day for thirty fires and sleep on the floor outside his master's room. He cleaned shoes, ironed underwear and socks and once had to stand all night in the hall waiting for a late visitor to arrive.But as a butler he was the best paid servant in the house, waited on, feared and respected by the other servants.Bob Sharpe knew the real world of upstairs downstairs and the secrets of the landed gentry - even to the point of incest and attempted murder!

They Also Serve shows you life below stairs as it really was and is perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and nostalgia memoirs.


Part of the Lives of Servants series. Other titles in the series are: The Maid's Tale, The Cook's Tale and Cocoa at Midnight.

Bob Sharpe, who was born in 1902 and died in 1985, worked both in London and in several country houses. Tom Quinn is the editor of the Country Landowner's Magazine. He has written several small books for small independent publishers. He has spent the last twenty years interviewing people who worked in domestic service, getting them to tell him their life stories.