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Downton Abbey

999 replies

missmogwi · 18/09/2011 22:18

Bloody mum rang to ask me about how much Internet she can use before it's full. Don't ask.

Why did bates have to leave?? Aaargh missed crucial bit!

OP posts:
limitedperiodonly · 05/10/2011 19:13

diddl If Downton Abbey has taught me one thing it is that the world is not fair.

Biscuitsandtea · 05/10/2011 19:14

It's not right Diddl but that's class and power for you!

I think Violet did give some flimsy excuse to the Doc but that doesn't really excuse him not actually checking it out!

Northernlurker · 05/10/2011 19:15

Men up to their 40s were called up I think. It started off with the young but then moved upwards as casualties mounted.

Up to 1916 it was all volunteers. This led to the horrible situation where groups of lads went along in 1914 and 1915 and signed up together - so whole regiments were made up of friendship groups from one town or area. Lovely till they ended up in a huge battle - of which there were many - and were wiped out. That's one thing which Downton, because of it's relatively small cast, is not showing. By 1917 almost inevitably there would have been major casualties amongst the farm workers/villagers but we aren't seeing that at all.

In Edinburgh Castle chapel there are memorial books for soldiers who died in WW1. I remember looking at them a few years ago - there's a page or two for most dates. Till you get to 1st July 1916 when there is page after page after page - that's the date of the first day of the Battle of the Somme with around 50,000 killed or injured I think. So if you put Violet's actions against this background you can see why she would want to keep the family retainers out of harms way. Unlike Lord G she has no scruples in doing do.

limitedperiodonly · 05/10/2011 19:22

northern that's what I wondered about Branson.

It's summer or early autumn 1917. I'm not sure how keen a doctor would have been to exempt him on the grounds of a heart murmur seeing as there'd be a bit of a staff shortage.

He's an Irishman but Ireland was still part of the British State until 1921, I think. So could they have called him up or not? Do you know?

limitedperiodonly · 05/10/2011 19:26

Also, that's just one of the things I gathered from All Quiet On The Western Front. Groups of German friends all joined up together at the outset from patriotism, friendship and social pressure. Tragic.

Mind you, my dad, his brother and their friends joined up in 1939. It wasn't patriotism, it was the realisation that they were going to be conscripted and if they volunteered there was at least some choice about where they were going and who they were going to be with. Again, tragic.

limitedperiodonly · 05/10/2011 19:28

There was justification for WWII beyond territorial interests though.

Northernlurker · 05/10/2011 19:28

Yes I think they could - and that's why he's at the doctors at all - because he has been called up. He would never have volunteered!

If anybody wants to read something set in the same period I recommend this trilogy. The second one - POst of Honour - deals with the war years and is far more realistic about the scale of the casualties than Downton has been so far.

limitedperiodonly · 05/10/2011 19:35

Okay, thanks. I read Pat Barker's trilogy and Robert Graves's Goodbye To All That which gives a young officer's perspective and also one who has German relations.

Hate, hate, hate the exploitative tosh that is Sebastian Faulk's Birdsong - but there was a bit of a publishing fashion for WWI misery/romance about 20 years ago.

Must stop thinking about the tiny of brain, enormous of ego Faulks. Not good for blood pressure.

Northernlurker · 05/10/2011 19:35

Limitedperiod - history justifies WWII because we know what Nazi rule meant - now. At the time decisions were being made in the thirties that information wasn't as clear cut. Which is why modern eyes can criticise a number of Thirties politicians and figures like Neville Chamberlain and the Duke of Windsor so much but it isn't imo really fair to do so. Likewise Churchill's belligerence now seems (and in fact was) a good response BUT Churchill presided over the disaster that was the Dardanelles campaign in WWI and if like Chamberlain your over-riding priority is to preserve the nation from another awful time of suffering then Churchill would be the last person you would want to listen to!

limitedperiodonly · 05/10/2011 19:45

northern you're very right. I'm talking in hindsight. Because my dad survived and mum too in the Blitz and that's why I'm here. They met 1943ish.

My mum often talks about a woman who hid her husband. It's always a comment, not a judgment.

She condemns Churchill as a warmonger who sent in the troops against the General Strike - people like her father who was just trying to get work to feed his family.

She also had no time for the Queen 'now I can look the East End in the face' Mother. She was appalled to see the hundreds of people queueing to see Widow Twanky, as she called her, lying in State.

How quickly reputations are rewritten. Mind you, she loved Princess Di so she's not immune to a good PR job. Grin

Northernlurker · 05/10/2011 20:06

And how much a part is played by expediency, You'll notice no government attempted to intervene to protect the Russian people from Stalin......Granted an intervention would have been fruitless in any case.

ThePsychicSatsuma · 05/10/2011 21:45

chortle at 'as keen as mustard gas' limited. vair good.

ok,
howabout this to twist your noodle..

Mary gets pregnant whilst Matthew missing, feared dead. The General is the father. he refuses to marry her, as he is still married to Mrs General.
Daisy and Mrs White the cook; carson and Cora, and anna all die of influenza
Thomas takes over the whole of Downton when lord G has a vicious stroke and loses his Marbles.
Family, bullied by Isobel, lock him in the attic.
Edith falls over in front of branston Pickle and he sweeps he up into his Irish arms before she drives him away, finally back to ireland.
Edith offers to save mary;'s reputation by raising the baby as her own, mary wont hear of it, edith blackmails her, mary pushes her off the roof
Sybil becomes matron, nurses all the flu victims
Ethel also falls downstairs, lands on a large saucepan has a depressed skull fracture and dies.
Lord G is left in the attic when there is a small house fire, is overcome by smoke.
Matthew returns dazed & confused, as does william who is given the purple heart and is a hero.
Matthew in jealous rage at the general, sees him off. accepts child as the heir.
Violet aghast at quietness of house once hospital all packed up. lavinia declares herself a lover of tipping the velvet and heads to London to be on the stage in an erotic show.

ThePsychicSatsuma · 05/10/2011 21:47

just a teeny question - what was O'Brien's actual aim with the soap, the miscarriage was not what she was trying to achieve, was it?

ThePsychicSatsuma · 05/10/2011 21:54

omg just saw Bates Lord G and Anna giving an award on the Heroes of Britain awards
anna's a cockney, who knew!

Summerbird73 · 05/10/2011 22:11

psychicsatsuma sadly i think that was her aim, i cant think of anything else, also when she went out of the bathroom and caught herself out she said something like 'no you are not that person' and tried to prevent the soap incident.

Biscuitsandtea · 05/10/2011 22:29

Anna's a cockney? really? - but she always plays that northernish accent?

What channel are the PoB on? I might have to watch them on catchup tomoz

limitedperiodonly · 05/10/2011 22:35

william who is given the purple heart

It'll be purple, but it won't be his heart.

Northernlurker · 05/10/2011 23:29

Americans get the Purple Heart for being wounded on active service. The English just get wounded Grin

Pyschic - I think you've been reading too much Jane Eyre!

ppeatfruit · 06/10/2011 09:29

IMO if the pregnancy is viable you wouldn't loose it by falling on a bar of soap, Cora would have miscarried anyway.

Anyone watch Dinnerladies? being repeated on Gold ATM (my fave sitcom of all time they can repeat it anytime) the Anna actress plays a brilliant 'work experience' in it!!

Longtime · 06/10/2011 10:30

Anna (Joanne Froggatt) is from Scarborough though moved to Maidenhead when she was 13 apparently. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Froggatt

ripstheirthroatoutliveupstairs · 06/10/2011 10:52

Psychic, once again I congratulate you. Limited I ha'd so loudly the two cats jumped out of their skin.
ppeat, I agree, the pregnancy wasn't viable.

ThePsychicSatsuma · 06/10/2011 13:18

ok not the purple heart...maybe the bronze star?
the silver saucer? or the golden goat....

ThePsychicSatsuma · 06/10/2011 13:22

due to JF's subtle reminder that thomas had a very troubled background, when he went all wistful and almost spilled his guts about his sexuality to the suicidal soldier;
we can be sure the truth will out. A new male young handsome character will surface, who will come and begin blackmailing thomas to keep his past secret...

ThePsychicSatsuma · 06/10/2011 13:25

...and did someone speculate downthread that O'Brien was Thomas's mother
she could be entwined as well...

they escaped yorkshire poverty, O'brien the beaten daughter of a shabby seamstress, went to be an undermaid at local posh manor house, got knocked up by a travelling king, left home in scandal, had thomas whilst in the care of a kind chimney sweep, sold thomas to some brutal farmers, got job at downton.

some yrs later, thomas hunts her down, finds her at downton and joins her. she is unaware that he is her sold son, but he is biding his time to acknowledge her as his mother....

limitedperiodonly · 06/10/2011 13:29

Yes, yes, it was me with the theory that Thomas is O'Brien's cub psychic.

Just glad to be part of your plot-spinning.