If you've watched the Downton Abbey movie and enjoyed it, you may want to read some books about the period it was set in. The movie revolves around a royal visit to the country house in the year 1927, well over a decade later than the Downton Abbey series. Not only is there a royal visit, but there is a plot to assassinate the king, George V. George V never, in reality, faced an assassination plot, but there is no doubt that the 1920s were anxious times for royalty in particular and the upper classes generally. The end of the First World War had seen the fall of the German and Russian monarchies, both cousins of George V, as well as the collapse of the Habsburgs' multi-national monarchy.

There was plenty of social and political change in Britain. Universal male suffrage was introduced soon after the end of World War I, leading to the rise of the Labour Party as a new political force in British politics. There was a general strike in 1926 and more and more people were beginning to think a socialist future inevitable. Noel Coward may have sung “The stately homes of England, how beautifully they stand, to show the upper classes have still the upper hand” but there was a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety about exactly how long that upper hand would last, or how long those stately homes would stand.

We choose five books here, to illustrate the period and the world of Downton Abbey.