They Also Serve: The real life story of my time in service as a butler

Tom Quinn

Hodder & Stoughton, Aug 30, 2012 - Biography & Autobiography - 256 pages

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!

About the author

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: They Also Serve: The real life story of my time in service as a butler; Volume 3 of The Lives of Servants Series
• Author: Tom Quinn
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2012
• ISBN: 1444735934, 9781444735932
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / General; Biography & Autobiography / General