In the summer of 1964, twenty-one-year-old Gillies Macbain arrives in
Dublin off the ferry from England with only his bicycle, a suitcase and
a tent to his name. Young, handsome and charismatic, he begins work as a
footman in one of the houses of the dying aristocracy. Thus begins his
foray into the upper echelons of Irish society. The Last Footman is an
intriguing narrative which describes a fading part of Irish society that
Macbain subverts with wry humour. Macbain finds himself in a precarious
niche: the borderland between upstairs and downstairs, and later on the
borderland proper between Northern Ireland and the south. Here, he rubs
shoulders with a cast of characters from the bohemian socialites to the
chancer Sketchly and the hippies with their dewy-eyed morals. Among
these is an encounter with Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull that
epitomises Macbain's straddling of glamourous and workaday lifestyles.
Macbain's memoirs run the gamut of Irish social classes, from his
friendship with County Monaghan small farmers and tenants, to working
with a dubious cast of actors and producers on a film set at Castle
Leslie, to eventually marrying into the circle of the 'idle rich'. An
irresistible story told by a charming storyteller, this memoir sheds
light on an era of Irish domestic industry, and Irish social history,
that has all but been forgotten.
