The Abbey Habit

Julian Fellowes is at this month’s Cheltenham Literature Festival, talking about the hotly-anticipated new Downton Abbey – yes, it’s out! – film. Katie Jarvis (who had a sneak movie preview) chatted to him about royalty, loyalty, courtesy and costumes

I met Julian Fellowes once, back in the heady heat of last summer.

We were in a garden, where the peonies swayed like a clutch of Crawley sisters, pink, rose and white silks ruffled by a pollen-infused breeze; each topped with blossom as elegant as a cloche hat.

Behind us stood a centuries-old house, ghostly with party-goers-past, as ephemeral as the golden bubbles in their long-quaffed champagne. Overhead, a low-flying bee buzzed through a July-blue sky, lifting and dipping like a biplane. Below us, mostly unseen on this greenest of lawns, scurried worker ants, endlessly foraging.

While we…

Well, we ate effortlessly off mouth watering platters brought to our expectant hands by attentive waiters.

Then, someone asked: “Would you like to meet Julian?”

And there he was, reclining on a garden chair under branches of a tree spreading like an emerald parasol. Surrounded by a coterie of ‘names’. Dressed immaculately. Urbane and witty; generous in focus.

And that was how it was. A hierarchy of perfection. Everything in its proper place. Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, is beautifully mannered.

“Thank you very much for speaking to me,” I say, gratefully, when he comes on the line.

“I’m delighted!” he replies. “I’m more delighted,” I point out. Partly because I have the more substantial claim.

And partly because manners are everything in Downton Abbey, the television series Julian Fellowes cocreated back in 2010; the period drama – set in an English country house - that’s taken the world by storm.

Once, when Maggie Smith (playing the distinguished Dowager Countess Violet –