Barbara Cartland's Etiquette Handbook

Apr 21, 2025 3:20 PM

Author:Barbara Cartland

'For the record, the word "parlour" is not used, nor is the relatively recent insidious "lounge", except about airports, hotels and liners.'

'Boys should be taught at a very early age - six or seven - to say "Sir" to an older man.'

'When there are servants, the plates for the first course are never put on the table until everyone is seated.'

'I cannot stress too often that on every formal occasion, whether it is Luncheon, a Bazaar or a Meeting, a hat should be worn.'

Written nearly 50 years ago, Barbara Cartland's Etiquette Handbook conjures up a period when addressing work colleagues by their first names was frowned upon, wives could expect to receive a weekly allowance of five shillings from their husbands, and hats were ubiquitous. Laced throughout with Barbara Cartland's wit and wisdom, and Francis Marshall's illustrations, this is a wonderfully evocative insight into the manners of an England that has largely disappeared.

Reviews

It might be the saving of us all ...it's easy to tease about a book written for another age but when you look at our society today, you can' t half suspect that she was, on the whole right.

—— Sunday Express

A glimpse at life when cooking breakfast for your husband in a shabby dressing gown and without lipstick was frowned upon

—— Yours

A snacky, fun and encouraging guide to accepting ourselves as we are . . . With life-changing advice, laid-back nutritional nuggets and anti-celebrity thinness treatises, this is a multi-vitamin treat for soul and body.

—— Good Housekeeping

[A] no-nonsense guide to shifting pounds and looking fantastic.

—— NOW magazine

A pleasure to read . . . her tone is as sweet and light as a sugar substitute.

—— London Lite

Exploring her own marriage has given Baum a unique vantage point from which to investigate the private intricacies of other people's arrangements . . . Her ability to sit in the midst of those arguments and unpick their various strands makes her work compelling, as does her willingness to self-interrogate

—— Times

This delightful, acrobatic book is funny, thought-provoking and rigorous at the same time. An effervescent and timely meditation on marriage

—— Darian Leader

Devorah Baum brings her literary understandings, psychoanalytic scholarship and great aplomb to the marriage conundrum. It's very funny too. Who wouldn't want to marry Devorah?

—— Susie Orbach

On Marriage is characterized by this kind of agile curiosity . . . Baum holds [marriage] up as a seduction

—— Rebecca Mead , The New Yorker

Because marriage doesn't always bring out the best in us, it makes us wonder what the best in us might be. It is part of the extraordinary wit and wisdom of Baum's remarkable book to show us what kind of romance, and experiment in living, we have wanted marriage to be

—— Adam Phillips

Everything you thought you knew about conjugal beds, secrets, feuds, confessions, triangulations and solaces will be pleasurably complicated by Devorah Baum's wryly insightful tell - all regarding the infinite perversity of marriage - including her own, mine, and probably yours

—— Laura Kipnis

On Marriage is a hugely thought-provoking, witty, warm tour around every significant writer and thinker on love to have emerged since Adam and Eve. Baum is a charming guide to the wisdom of her inspiring judiciously curated cohort

—— Alain de Botton

Baum looks at marriage from multiple angles, legal and political, social and narrative, its interminability and its dailiness . . . it can be funny or tragic or both. Baum’s methodology is to look at what is missing – a philosophy of marriage, a clear idea of what this dominant structure is and how it influences lives. Lovely

—— The White Review

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