Downton Abbey: Fell In Love With a House

I grew up watching Masterpiece Theater (and once impersonated Alistair Cooke for a multi-media presentation by my mother), so the current popularity of Downton Abbey, which concludes its second season on Sunday, Feb. 19 in the United States, comes as little surprise to me. I’ve been watching versions of this show, and reading its novelistic forebears, since I was 12. Is there anything better than romance and fancy clothes? I feel like I’ve never not known what a shirtwaist was.