Downton Abbey Reading List

This past week there have been a handful of articles with reading lists that tie into Downton Abbey. Here is the collected lists of books/poetry and the links to the articles I pulled the list from.

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle by the Countess of Carnarvon
Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor by Rosina Harrison
A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd
Into the Silence by Wade Davis
The World of Downton Abbey by Jessica Fellowes
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine
The Beauty and the Sorrow, an Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund
Wat the Butler Winked At: Being the Life and Adventures of Eric Horne, Butler by Eric Horne

Downton Abbey Poetry Reading List
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke
Poems by Wilfred Owen
Poems by Edward Thomas
The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon

As an extra bonus, here is the full text of Owen’s most famous poem.

Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Downton Abbey Poetry Reading List - GalleyCat
If You're Mad for 'Downton,' Publishers Have Reading List
Book list released for Downton Abbey fans