The Downton Abbey connection (in case you missed it) is that Highclere Castle, the ancestral home of the Earls of Carnarvon, is the filming location for Downton Abbey, which is set contemporaneously with Almina’s tenure as chatelaine of Highclere. And this book, rather than sending me back to watch Downton Abbey all over again, sent me instead to reread the novels about Amelia Peabody (and Vicky Bliss too). Lawrence from the Peabody novels, I felt like an insider when it came to Lord Carnarvon’s archaeological efforts in Egypt. Having long been familiar with not only Carter but other real people like Wallis Budge and even T. But for those who are fans of hers (I speak of the series of novels written by Elizabeth Peters), the account of Howard Carter’s discovery (along with the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, of course) of the King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 inevitably brings Amelia and her milieu to mind.
To be honest, there is nothing about Amelia Peabody in the book at all. I can reduce my review to three phrases: (1) Title Abuse (2) Downton Abbey (3) Amelia Peabody. But the result is easy to read and the bibliography, if little else, is substantive (though it seems to me that little of it actually made it into the text). I rather wish Lady Carnarvon had chosen to go in one direction or the other: a meaty, substantive biography or a lighter, fictionalized account. It does not purport to be a sophisticated biography, being entirely without footnotes or endnotes, and claims, in the Prologue, to be “neither a biography nor a work of fiction, but places characters in historical settings, as identified from letters, diaries, visitor books and household accounts written at the time.” I found this characterization a little puzzling because it is clearly a biography and does not in any way approach fiction: there is no dialogue and very little in the way of scenes or vignettes. This book lacks depth but is fairly well written and well researched. The Countess of Carnarvon has written a biography of one of her predecessors: Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, wife of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon.
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