Emma Fielding

Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She only wants to make people laugh. She lands a life-changing audition for a new BBC comedy series and overnight she becomes Sophie Straw: charming, gorgeous, destined to win the nation's hearts. But soon the script begins to get a bit too close to home, and life starts imitating art..

It is wash-day for the housemaids at Longbourn House the residence of the Bennett family of Pride and Prejudice. Domestic life below stairs, ruled by Mrs Hill the housekeeper, is about to be disturbed. For in Georgian England, there is a world the young ladies in the drawing room will never know, a world of poverty, love, and brutal war.