Happily ever after

I'm suffering withdrawal from Downtown Abbey, having tapered my doses of Season 6 by watching every episode twice before proceeding to the next, but all good things etc. Having read a recommendation for the British novelist Henry Green's autobiographical book Pack My Bag (by Helen Macdonald, the author of the wonderful book Hawk) and having ventured into the deepest reaches of the library stacks to find it (Green), smelling of old book, I began to read it a few days ago, just as I was watching DA Episode 9 (and final) for the last time, and lo! it is the Abbey in print form. Surely Julian Fellowes was inspired by it. I shall read Green's novels to explore this hypothesis. I see online that others have made this discovery before me, particularly with regard to a novel of Green's called Loving.

Really Fellowes must be commended for pairing off so many happy folk with more-than-Shakespearean gusto at the end of the series. You could see them all exchanging complicit winks at the marriage of Edith and Bertie, with a few more weddings clearly upcoming in epilogue. Perhaps there's even a match somewhere for poor Mr Barrow... . Seems a little unfair he should be the odd man out in the orgy of nuptials.