Downton Abbey: Highclere Castle where series set was almost lost after tax bill In 1926 there was the sale of the century at Christie's in London, where they sold the most beautiful works of art including those by Leonardo da Vinci and Gainsborough. The newly married Porchey, grandfather to Countess Carnarvon's husband, and Lady Catherine managed to save the house and still enjoy parties throughout the twenties attended by royalty, as told in the second book by Countess Carnarvon, Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey. The book details the marriage of Porchey to Lady Catherine, an American rumoured to be so beautiful she had 13 proposals of marriage. It tracks their life after the First World War and into the Second World War as well as Winston Churchill putting down Porchey when the two met, and Porchey's subsequent marriage to Tillie Losch. But the book stops at 1945, as Countess Carnarvon says her husband wasn't born then and she didn't want him to be in it. "A lot of the quotes are from a manuscript I found of Porchey's," she added. Some of them are hilarious and some are completely unprintable. Learning all about this just makes me want to work out how we can sustain it here and secure the heritage. Countess Carnarvon, who confesses to being a Downton Abbey fan, told Henley Literary Festival how the success of the series had brought more interest to the Berkshire estate, including visitors from across the world. She said: "I'm very fond of Peter Fincham, the chief executive of ITV. I'm incredibly grateful for his leap of faith in providing 50 per cent funding for the series. He supported a costume drama about an aristocratic family living in a country house. It was a huge gamble. We were hoping for four or five million viewers, but we knew we had really made it when we beat X Factor. Countess Carnarvon said filming for the show generally takes over the castle for around six months every year. She added: "Downton Abbey has become such a phenomenon. We just thought it was rather fun, the first series. We do end up watching it. All the "upstairs" scenes are filmed here and "downstairs" is filmed in Ealing so you know when you are watching they have walked down your staff stairs and then walked out onto the set in Ealing. A good thing about Downton Abbey is it gets people interested in history and reading about history.