Julian Fellowes Quotes


I come from a class which used to be called the gentry - which is nowadays mistakenly used to include the nobility, but in fact is not. The gentry was essentially the untitled landowning class.


Citations

Fellowes, Julian. Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR, 2012.

Related Quotes

1st Viscount Bolingbroke. See {627799} for the origin of the bias against merchants and money men. It also represents a rigidity of class structure that characterized England until very recently. The landed gentry were the first class citizens. Usually titles went with the land. In America, someone who would be successful as a merchant or a banker could achieve the highest of social status and political influence. This was not true in England where a merchant that was far more wealthy than a landed lord was not accepted by the aristocracy.


Chivalry was a set of rules that regulated the behavior of knights especially as to their behavior in battle. It was the Medieval equivalent of the Geneva Convention. At the time knights fought against knights and peasants fought against peasants. After time the fighting was mixed. Previously, if a knight was subdued by other knights, he would surrender and promise to fight any more and that would be honored. But when a small group of peasants brought down a knight in armor, he could not surrender. He had probably killed other lightly armored peasants who were friends, and the peasants did not trust the knights. So typically, the peasants just killed the fallen knight. Social class determined the concepts of honor, fairness, trust, and chivalry came to an end.


Julian Fellowes
Julian Fellowes
  • Born: August 17, 1949
  • Nationality: English
  • Profession: Actor, Novelist, Screenwriter, Film Director

Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford DL is an English actor, novelist, film director and screenwriter, and a Conservative peer of the House of Lords. He is primarily known as the author of several Sunday Times best-seller novels; for the screenplay for the film Gosford Park, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2002; and as the creator, writer and executive producer of the multiple award-winning ITV series Downton Abbey (2010–2015).