Oh be still my beating heart. Here we are, standing on the gravel outside the library doors at Highclere Castle, the English stately home in Hampshire that provides the ravishing setting for the television series, Downton Abbey. We are on the very spot where Matthew Crawley asked Lady Mary to marry him in the first Downton Abbey Christmas special, broadcast in 2011. Remember when the violins soared and snowflakes fell? When Matthew got down on one miraculously recovered knee to propose? For many viewers, this was their all-time favourite Downton scene. Scroll down for video . To the manor married: Lady Carnarvon, the real-life equivalent of Downton Abbey’s Cora, in front of Highclere . ‘Well, that wasn’t my favourite scene!’ cries the Countess of Carnarvon, the current chatelaine of Highclere and the real-life equivalent of Downton’s Cora, who’s Countess of Grantham. ‘The crew were using ash to recreate the snow. It got inside the house and we had to spend ages dusting and cleaning the rooms. And the smell! Very acrid. We reached the point where we had to stop them doing it.’ Lady Carnarvon has always been quite frank about the travails of letting a film crew loose inside her beautiful home. On the plus side, there are the location fees and increased visitor traffic; the crowds paying £20 a head to goggle at the splendour of her Highclere interiors and the red velvet sofas where the Crawleys gather to take tea. ‘Yes. It’s like that show, Poke Your Nose Through The Keyhole,’ she says. On the downside, damage and disruption. ‘I do get annoyed when visitors chuck litter about, but my husband goes around picking it up. We fill black bags with the stuff.’ And since the very first day of Downton filming, when a technician smashed a much-loved green objet de vertu trinket box, she has been on red alert for transgressions. When she is not telling the crew that she pops open the champagne the minute they leave, she is issuing instructions on the correct way to move precious antique furniture. ‘You lift a girl in your arms and a chair by its bottom,’ she will say. As Carson the butler (‘Oh, I adore him, he is divine’) would no doubt agree, the problem with having high standards is that so few manage to live up to them. Another who has incurred her displeasure is Ralph Lauren. The wealthy American designer and his family recently attended a swanky dinner at Highclere, hosted by the Earl and Countess. The Laurens committed the social faux pas of taking numerous photographs of themselves grinning cheesily on the famous Oak Staircase, and elsewhere in sumptuous Highclere, then proudly posting the snaps online. Her ladyship was not best pleased. ‘My interpretation of dinner is having a meal and his interpretation is taking photographs. It seemed to get out of hand. I have to live with that.’ Has she seen the pictures? ‘No and I don’t want to, because I don’t want to be irritated by them. My idea of a nice evening is having a conversation, not taking snaps. I have never knowingly taken a selfie, I am useless at photography. I am just . . . different, I suppose.’ The Countess of Carnarvon is the equivalent of Downton’s Cora, played by Elizabeth McGovern . To whizz down the mile-long drive to Highclere Castle is to travel back in time to a more gracious age. The stately home made famous by Downton has been the ancestral seat of the Earls of Carnarvon since 1679. Flanked by elegant pines planted from seed three centuries ago, the house sits in a rolling landscape designed by Capability Brown. To look upon the soaring architecture of Highclere is to understand the ambition and conceit of the old English upper classes, who once thought that life behind these ramparts of Bath stone, surrounded by Reynolds, Van Dycks and walls covered in green French silk, would go on for ever. Yet even the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by Lord and Lady Grantham in the fictional series is far removed from the realities of today. My dears, in the real Downton, the current chatelaine doesn’t even have a lady’s maid. ‘Certainly not!’ she says. ‘And sadly not, because I would absolutely love one.’ In this house, with more than 300 rooms and ‘about 80’ bedrooms, the servants’ bellboard is still there outside the kitchen, just as it was over 100 years ago. But now, instead of tinkling bells, estate staff are summoned by the crackling walkie-talkie her ladyship carries in her hand. Here, amid her six dogs, her horses, her staff and her husband, Lady Carnarvon gives the impression of a woman who reigns supreme. She was Fiona Aitken before she married Geordie Herbert, the Queen’s godson and soon to be eighth Earl of Carnarvon, 16 years ago. Fiona was a foxy blonde and arch Sloane Ranger. The eldest of six sisters, she was raised in Fulham, West London, and is a trained accountant who once designed and sold crushed velvet evening wraps to other Sloanes. Only two years after they married, she and Geordie took over Highclere when the seventh Earl died. ‘Then you understand that you marry the man and the house,’ she says today. While her husband runs the estate, the jolly, sporty 52-year-old has become the face and force of the real Downton, in charge of monetising the legacy from the popular TV show. In this, she has been enormously successful, writing two best-selling books about previous Carnarvon wives; Almina and Catherine. Lady Carnarvon gives the impression of a woman who reigns supreme, much like Dame Maggie's Dowager Countess of Grantham . She also gives talks all over the world. In Texas next month, the socialite Lynn Wyatt is hosting a champagne Highclere Tea where Texan fans of Downton can meet the countess over cake, all for the price of a £440 ticket. She is quite the draw, happy to take on the ambassadorial role while her husband stays in the background. Right on cue, Lord Carnarvon appears in his Dad jeans and trainers, coffee mug in hand. Seeing that the morning room where we are talking is occupied, he quietly reverses out the door, like a dog in a Crufts obedience trial. ‘He is very shy,’ his wife explains. No one, least of all the couple themselves, imagined that Downton Abbey would be so successful. Now screened in more than 100 countries, it brings Americans and Chinese visitors here in droves. ‘Who would have thought an Edwardian drama beginning in 1912 would have such huge appeal?’ she wonders. Who indeed, but shooting began this week on the sixth Downton series. ‘I am sure they would like to go on making more series,’ she says. ITV director Peter Fincham has told her that he wants Downton to go on for 18 years. ‘That made me gulp.’ The money that flows into the Highclere coffers as a result of the series must surely, however, cushion the blow of domestic disruption. After all, before Downton hit our screens, the Carnarvons admitted that their estate needed £11.75 million of repairs, including £1.8 million of urgent work on the main house. Although the family will not say how much money they get for the rental of the castle for filming, Lord Carnarvon has since said the show had ‘taken the pressure off’ them financially. There is also talk of a Hollywood film, which Lady C does not deny. ‘I try not to lie awake at night worrying about money,’ she says. ‘Obviously, like everyone else, I have a sense of complete panic every so often. I am not in a position where I have so much money I worry about what to do with it.’ On sleepless nights, she roams the Highclere corridors, and likes to sleep in her son’s bed when he is at boarding school. She soothes herself by listening to the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4, feeling grateful that she is not ‘alone in a boat on the ocean’. Lady Carnarvon first met her husband at a dinner party where they bonded over a love of World War I poetry. Her former lover, an eccentric cove called Sir Benjy Slade, had sued her for the return of a pet labrador and claimed she was ‘the ruthless golddigger of the year’. Highclere Castle, the English stately home in Hampshire, provides the ravishing setting for Downton Abbey . It’s far more likely that the Carnarvons were two slightly broken people who made each other complete. He had recently separated from his first wife and two young children; she was grieving over the early death of both her parents. They married in February 1999 and had their son Edward in October; a honeymoon baby for a gilded life. It is to her credit that she does all her work on Highclere in the full knowledge that it is her husband‘s son, not hers, who will inherit the Carnarvon title and all the lands. Edward gets nothing, but that does not bother her. ‘I am not worried. If I make some money from books, that is his. In life it is not what you take, it is what you give that matters most.’ She and Geordie appear to have a healthy working partnership, one that she describes as ‘50/50 with a one per cent swing either way.’ They eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day and never get tired of each other. Heaven for them is supper on a tray in front of the television. Her transition from confident and capable young woman to countess is fascinating. ‘I would hate to be considered snobbish,’ she says, although she learned, in the upper class way, to use charm as a weapon to get what she wants. ‘You could walk into somewhere like Highclere and just stand like a petrified creature in the headlights, doing nothing. Or you could take it one step at a time. It is the end, not the journey, that matters.’ A journey that sometimes takes in some aggravating neighbours along the way. ‘I am a woman,’ she says, ‘who knows which battles to fight.’
The Countess of Carnarvon is the real-life equivalent of Downton’s Cora .
Oh be still my beating heart. Here we are, standing on the gravel outside the library doors at Highclere Castle, the English stately home in Hampshire that provides the ravishing setting for the television series, Downton Abbey. We are on the very spot where Matthew Crawley asked Lady Mary to marry him in the first Downton Abbey Christmas special, broadcast in 2011. Remember when the violins soared and snowflakes fell? When Matthew got down on one miraculously recovered knee to propose? For many viewers, this was their all-time favourite Downton scene. Scroll down for video . To the manor married: Lady Carnarvon, the real-life equivalent of Downton Abbey’s Cora, in front of Highclere . ‘Well, that wasn’t my favourite scene!’ cries the Countess of Carnarvon, the current chatelaine of Highclere and the real-life equivalent of Downton’s Cora, who’s Countess of Grantham. ‘The crew were using ash to recreate the snow. It got inside the house and we had to spend ages dusting and cleaning the rooms. And the smell! Very acrid. We reached the point where we had to stop them doing it.’ Lady Carnarvon has always been quite frank about the travails of letting a film crew loose inside her beautiful home. On the plus side, there are the location fees and increased visitor traffic; the crowds paying £20 a head to goggle at the splendour of her Highclere interiors and the red velvet sofas where the Crawleys gather to take tea. ‘Yes. It’s like that show, Poke Your Nose Through The Keyhole,’ she says. On the downside, damage and disruption. ‘I do get annoyed when visitors chuck litter about, but my husband goes around picking it up. We fill black bags with the stuff.’ And since the very first day of Downton filming, when a technician smashed a much-loved green objet de vertu trinket box, she has been on red alert for transgressions. When she is not telling the crew that she pops open the champagne the minute they leave, she is issuing instructions on the correct way to move precious antique furniture. ‘You lift a girl in your arms and a chair by its bottom,’ she will say. As Carson the butler (‘Oh, I adore him, he is divine’) would no doubt agree, the problem with having high standards is that so few manage to live up to them. Another who has incurred her displeasure is Ralph Lauren. The wealthy American designer and his family recently attended a swanky dinner at Highclere, hosted by the Earl and Countess. The Laurens committed the social faux pas of taking numerous photographs of themselves grinning cheesily on the famous Oak Staircase, and elsewhere in sumptuous Highclere, then proudly posting the snaps online. Her ladyship was not best pleased. ‘My interpretation of dinner is having a meal and his interpretation is taking photographs. It seemed to get out of hand. I have to live with that.’ Has she seen the pictures? ‘No and I don’t want to, because I don’t want to be irritated by them. My idea of a nice evening is having a conversation, not taking snaps. I have never knowingly taken a selfie, I am useless at photography. I am just . . . different, I suppose.’ The Countess of Carnarvon is the equivalent of Downton’s Cora, played by Elizabeth McGovern . To whizz down the mile-long drive to Highclere Castle is to travel back in time to a more gracious age. The stately home made famous by Downton has been the ancestral seat of the Earls of Carnarvon since 1679. Flanked by elegant pines planted from seed three centuries ago, the house sits in a rolling landscape designed by Capability Brown. To look upon the soaring architecture of Highclere is to understand the ambition and conceit of the old English upper classes, who once thought that life behind these ramparts of Bath stone, surrounded by Reynolds, Van Dycks and walls covered in green French silk, would go on for ever. Yet even the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by Lord and Lady Grantham in the fictional series is far removed from the realities of today. My dears, in the real Downton, the current chatelaine doesn’t even have a lady’s maid. ‘Certainly not!’ she says. ‘And sadly not, because I would absolutely love one.’ In this house, with more than 300 rooms and ‘about 80’ bedrooms, the servants’ bellboard is still there outside the kitchen, just as it was over 100 years ago. But now, instead of tinkling bells, estate staff are summoned by the crackling walkie-talkie her ladyship carries in her hand. Here, amid her six dogs, her horses, her staff and her husband, Lady Carnarvon gives the impression of a woman who reigns supreme. She was Fiona Aitken before she married Geordie Herbert, the Queen’s godson and soon to be eighth Earl of Carnarvon, 16 years ago. Fiona was a foxy blonde and arch Sloane Ranger. The eldest of six sisters, she was raised in Fulham, West London, and is a trained accountant who once designed and sold crushed velvet evening wraps to other Sloanes. Only two years after they married, she and Geordie took over Highclere when the seventh Earl died. ‘Then you understand that you marry the man and the house,’ she says today. While her husband runs the estate, the jolly, sporty 52-year-old has become the face and force of the real Downton, in charge of monetising the legacy from the popular TV show. In this, she has been enormously successful, writing two best-selling books about previous Carnarvon wives; Almina and Catherine. Lady Carnarvon gives the impression of a woman who reigns supreme, much like Dame Maggie's Dowager Countess of Grantham . She also gives talks all over the world. In Texas next month, the socialite Lynn Wyatt is hosting a champagne Highclere Tea where Texan fans of Downton can meet the countess over cake, all for the price of a £440 ticket. She is quite the draw, happy to take on the ambassadorial role while her husband stays in the background. Right on cue, Lord Carnarvon appears in his Dad jeans and trainers, coffee mug in hand. Seeing that the morning room where we are talking is occupied, he quietly reverses out the door, like a dog in a Crufts obedience trial. ‘He is very shy,’ his wife explains. No one, least of all the couple themselves, imagined that Downton Abbey would be so successful. Now screened in more than 100 countries, it brings Americans and Chinese visitors here in droves. ‘Who would have thought an Edwardian drama beginning in 1912 would have such huge appeal?’ she wonders. Who indeed, but shooting began this week on the sixth Downton series. ‘I am sure they would like to go on making more series,’ she says. ITV director Peter Fincham has told her that he wants Downton to go on for 18 years. ‘That made me gulp.’ The money that flows into the Highclere coffers as a result of the series must surely, however, cushion the blow of domestic disruption. After all, before Downton hit our screens, the Carnarvons admitted that their estate needed £11.75 million of repairs, including £1.8 million of urgent work on the main house. Although the family will not say how much money they get for the rental of the castle for filming, Lord Carnarvon has since said the show had ‘taken the pressure off’ them financially. There is also talk of a Hollywood film, which Lady C does not deny. ‘I try not to lie awake at night worrying about money,’ she says. ‘Obviously, like everyone else, I have a sense of complete panic every so often. I am not in a position where I have so much money I worry about what to do with it.’ On sleepless nights, she roams the Highclere corridors, and likes to sleep in her son’s bed when he is at boarding school. She soothes herself by listening to the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4, feeling grateful that she is not ‘alone in a boat on the ocean’. Lady Carnarvon first met her husband at a dinner party where they bonded over a love of World War I poetry. Her former lover, an eccentric cove called Sir Benjy Slade, had sued her for the return of a pet labrador and claimed she was ‘the ruthless golddigger of the year’. Highclere Castle, the English stately home in Hampshire, provides the ravishing setting for Downton Abbey . It’s far more likely that the Carnarvons were two slightly broken people who made each other complete. He had recently separated from his first wife and two young children; she was grieving over the early death of both her parents. They married in February 1999 and had their son Edward in October; a honeymoon baby for a gilded life. It is to her credit that she does all her work on Highclere in the full knowledge that it is her husband‘s son, not hers, who will inherit the Carnarvon title and all the lands. Edward gets nothing, but that does not bother her. ‘I am not worried. If I make some money from books, that is his. In life it is not what you take, it is what you give that matters most.’ She and Geordie appear to have a healthy working partnership, one that she describes as ‘50/50 with a one per cent swing either way.’ They eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together every day and never get tired of each other. Heaven for them is supper on a tray in front of the television. Her transition from confident and capable young woman to countess is fascinating. ‘I would hate to be considered snobbish,’ she says, although she learned, in the upper class way, to use charm as a weapon to get what she wants. ‘You could walk into somewhere like Highclere and just stand like a petrified creature in the headlights, doing nothing. Or you could take it one step at a time. It is the end, not the journey, that matters.’ A journey that sometimes takes in some aggravating neighbours along the way. ‘I am a woman,’ she says, ‘who knows which battles to fight.’
and the real-life equivalent of Downton’s Cora, different, I suppose.’ The Countess of Carnarvon