Jean Marsh, who has died aged 90, created the classic 1970s television series Upstairs, Downstairs with her friend and fellow actor Dame Eileen Atkins. As well as co-writing the series, Marsh played the part of Rose Buck, a parlour maid, who became something of a sex symbol in the early 70s and returned as the housekeeper when the series was revived nearly four decades later.
The period drama, “the everyday story of Edwardian folk”, as the Guardian described it at the time, followed the intertwined lives of the upper-class Bellamy family and their servants, at 165 Eaton Place in Belgravia, London. Set between 1903 and 1930, the series documented a period of immense social change.
