The lives of aristocratic families, as well as their ancestral bricks and mortar, have filled many a recent book. It therefore makes a pleasant change to read about the other side of the picture. Ms Sambrook has trawled painstakingly through a vast archive relating to the lives of the servants at Trentham, the Staffordshire home of the Leveson-Gower family, the Dukes of Sutherland, who were said in the mid-nineteenth century to be the richest non-royal family in Britain. In doing so, she has brought an often unexplored part of our history to life very well.