Why snobbery against our US cousins refuses to die

As the latest Downton Abbey film opens, Anna Pasternak reflects on the anti-American sentiments of Lady Mary and chums - and looks at the scorn directed at Meghan Markle

- Anna Pasternak

As the curtain comes down after 15 years of Downton mania with the release of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, there is a striking sense of end-of-an-era poignancy. The film, set in 1930, captures a fast-vanishing world before it dissolves into modern uncertainty. Yet, along with sepia-edged nostalgia for a bygone age of dignity and old-fashioned formality, there is also one area where little has changed during the last century.

The film is steeped in anti-American sentiment among the "upstairs class", which holds true today. At one point, Lady Mary, now a divorcee, exclaims: "Golly, a house full of Yanks and I'm the one keeping everyone away." She has been told that an intended dinner party at Downton can not go ahead, as no one will come, knowing that she is divorced.

Amid the aristocracy, twas ever thus. Being American, which, to the faded grandeur of the old English monied classes, screams being brash, flash and vulgar, has always been socially less acceptable than being a divorcee.

The British upper classes continue to hold their noses at the stench of "new money" while often marrying wealthy American heiresses to fund their crumbling castles and stately piles. (Which is exactly what happens in Downton Abbey - Lord Grantham married an American heiress, Cora Levinson, to secure his stately home.)