Julian Fellowes: The real reason Downton was set in Yorkshire

Downton Abbey may have made its final curtain call, but its creator Julian Fellowes' period work is far from over as he takes on Anthony Trollope. Phil Penfold talks to him.

BRINGING Downton Abbey to a close wasn’t a problem for Julian Fellowes, the avuncular writer behind the international hit period drama. The man whose many hats include actor, scribe and Tory peer, is in a confessional mood.

“It had run its course on TV,” he confides, “and we all wanted to end it while it was still at the very top end of the ratings. What caused the most difficulty was what I intended to do with the character of Lady Edith. She’d had a very bumpy ride of things over six series, and I was inundated with e-mails and Twitter messages about her fate.

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“They were nearly all along the lines of ‘give this wretched girl a break!’ An unhappy ending can be unfair when you’ve followed someone up hill and down dale in a book, a play, a movie or on TV.”

Doctor Thorne stars Stefanie Martin as Mary Thorne, Tom Hollander as Doctor Thorne, Harry Richardson as Frank Gresham and Rebecca Front as Lady Arabella Gresham.Doctor Thorne stars Stefanie Martin as Mary Thorne, Tom Hollander as Doctor Thorne, Harry Richardson as Frank Gresham and Rebecca Front as Lady Arabella Gresham.
Doctor Thorne stars Stefanie Martin as Mary Thorne, Tom Hollander as Doctor Thorne, Harry Richardson as Frank Gresham and Rebecca Front as Lady Arabella Gresham.

Lord Fellowes is more than a little coy about the much-talked-about potential for a film version of Downton. “There is a script, and it still could happen”, he says.

“It is all very much in the lap of the gods, and, of course, it will very much depend on whether we can reassemble the cast, or the majority of them. So many of the younger ones have left it all behind in their quest to do other things. But yes, it would be good to reacquaint ourselves with the Granthams.”

The question that a lot of fans in this county want answered, of course, is why was Downton set in Yorkshire, but never shot here? “I can tell you now that when I was first approached to do something as a long-running period drama, I was also told, very firmly, that it had to be set in the north. ITV laid that down as one of the rules. There was no question of it being about London, or the Home Counties. And I did know just a little about Yorkshire.” 
The 66-year-old blushes slightly as he explains: “The fact is that I went to Ampleforth, in North Yorkshire, the Catholic boarding school. And I had rather a decent time there. So, if I never really got to know the places that well, I did know the names of Richmond and Malton and Thirsk.

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“The Granthams were always going shopping somewhere, or the earl was off to a mess dinner somewhere in the locale. Nothing was ever filmed there, of course – in fact on one occasion, when there was a scene in York, it was shot in the area around the Embankment in London, and CGI cleverly filled in the background with what was supposed to be part of the Minster tower.

Doctor Thorne stars Stefanie Martin as Mary Thorne, Tom Hollander as Doctor Thorne, Harry Richardson as Frank Gresham and Rebecca Front as Lady Arabella Gresham.Doctor Thorne stars Stefanie Martin as Mary Thorne, Tom Hollander as Doctor Thorne, Harry Richardson as Frank Gresham and Rebecca Front as Lady Arabella Gresham.
Doctor Thorne stars Stefanie Martin as Mary Thorne, Tom Hollander as Doctor Thorne, Harry Richardson as Frank Gresham and Rebecca Front as Lady Arabella Gresham.

“Had I been sent to school somewhere else in Yorkshire, then things would have been different. There would have been lots of mentions of Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster. That’s just the way that things happen. You always write about places that you know.” He pauses and smiles sheepishly: “Especially when you are offered no other option by the people putting up the money”.

His natural home, he admits, is in drama set in the past. He turned in a very creditable job on Young Victoria, re-imagined Vanity Fair, and even supplied the book for the musical version of Mary Poppins. He is still, he says, slightly surprised that Downton Abbey took off the way it did.

“There was a time, six and more years ago, when we were all being told that the days of period drama were finished. But you have to always bear in mind one key fact about the movie and TV industries.

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“The more they tell you things as fact, the more you realise that no-one knows anything. When you live in rather troubled times – and I think that we are, at the moment – it is somewhat comforting to enjoy yourself in the glow of the past.

“I think that Downton hit the spot, because I was asked to set it in a period of great social change. By the end of the Thirties, nearly all the rules of former years had been abandoned.

“There were very few servants left who had to get up in the morning at 4am to clean the grates, to fill the coal scuttles and to heat the water for the baths and for the shaving bowls. And there were very few aristocrats lounging around waiting for the next meal time to roll around.”

His latest project is a three-part adaptation of a novel by one of the Victorian era’s greatest authors, Anthony Trollope. Doctor Thorne starts on Sunday and it stars Rebecca Front, Ian McShane and Tom (Rev) Hollander in the title role.

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“He’s the village doctor,” explains Fellowes, “a modest man and a bachelor who lives with his niece Mary – who is actually the daughter of a village girl born illegitimate after a seduction. So that’s a very modern state of affairs. I was fascinated by the fact that, a hundred and more years ago, the illegitimate sons of a certain strata of society would be accepted and maybe eased into respectable positions, but that the daughters would be almost air-brushed out of the way.

“Trollope’s themes are, I think, very contemporary – he’s very practical, and he realised that it all comes down to money. His own society was a very cruel one. He understood that money is the petrol that fuels the whole thing.

“And in 2016, we love the rich, we want to see the rich, and at the same time – we hate them. I think that he would have approved of the more fluid American society of his time than the rather rigid and pompous British one.”

He laughs: “And I love Trollope’s women. There’s a classic in Doctor Thorne in the shape of Lady Arabella Gresham (played beautifully by Front) who is very high on the list of ‘monster women’.

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“She’s a ghastly person, but – and here’s the ‘but’ – she’s the only one of her family trying to move things forward and to resolve problems. While her husband sits in the corner wringing his hands, she just gets up and gets on with it! You are never on her side, but at least you do see her point of view.”

Fellowes concedes that Trollope is read today and is always in print but says the writer has never been hugely popular. “Someone recently said that ‘Trollope is a great writer in the same way that a Marks and Spencer’s ready meal dinner is haute cuisine’. A bit naughty. And his contemporaries thought – and said – that he simply wrote too much.”

Fellowes is such a Trollope enthusiast that he confesses that he even took one of the author’s novels on his honeymoon in 1990, when he had just married his wife Emma. “I sat with my nose in it for far too long”, he recalls with a laugh, “which was not that much appreciated.

“The nice thing about Trollope, though – and his critics didn’t like this, either – was that he enjoyed giving a happy ending. He said at one point that ‘a novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humour and sweetened by pathos’.

“But then, just like Mr Trollope, I rather like happy endings, too. Even Lady Edith deserved one...”

Doctor Thorne begins on ITV1 on Sunday, March 6 at 9pm.

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