Christopher Buckley’s diary: Do you have to be American to love Downton?

My wife and I spent the winter in Worcestershire. This allowed me to tell everyone back home in the States: ‘We are wintering in Worcestershire.’ This may be a sentence that has never actually been uttered in human history, even by people who spend all their winters in Worcestershire. It turned out to be a wonderful time, despite us arriving in, according to the papers, ‘the wettest winter since 1755’. For what seemed like weeks, every time I turned on the television while cooking, there was Mr Cameron beneath a brolly (as I think you call them) shouting into a microphone, ‘Money is no object!’ There was a lot to watch on the BBC while I made stir-fry and attempted rabbit stew. Between the Olympics and developments in Ukraine, most TV-watching had to do with the Crimea, one way or the other. The stir-fry was a success. The rabbit stew was not.