“Like a hot water bottle on a cold night”, “Downton Abbey” has “long been a great comfort to us Brits”, said Dulcie Pearce in The Sun .

In the first episode of the TV drama, in 2010, the aristocratic Crawley family learnt about the sinking of the “Titanic”; then, over six series and two feature films, we followed them and their servants through the First World War and the influenza pandemic . Now, it is time to say goodbye.

This final film opens in London in 1930, where Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) has scandalised polite society by divorcing her husband; then her American uncle (Paul Giamatti) arrives at Downton with a slimy friend (Alessandro Nivola) to confess that he has lost the family fortune in bad business deals. Of course, the Dowager Countess (played so memorably by the la

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