But, for the Victorians, particularly if you were a servant, it was considered a disadvantage.
SERVANT: It appears they have gotten rid of the irrelevant other ten per cent, based on the VHF dial.
I have a bit of a soft spot for it, because in my former life as a public servant it was my job to administer it.
Written over many years by an elderly Pakistani civil servant, it was by a long way the most memorable book of the year.
In 1848, Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, the French priest and political activist, rightly noted, "Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between master and servant, it is freedom that oppresses and the law that sets free".
He attended university in the US, but explains that, although he is the son of a teacher, politician and public servant, it was the time spent in Tanzania's rural areas as a child that most influenced his development.
Its title, From Keynes to Corbynomics: the General Theory at 80 was a bit of a misnomer because Skidelsky didn't dwell on the Labour leader's economic ideas and Macpherson said that, as a civil servant, it wasn't proper to do so.
This isn't The Servant, it's The Remains of the Day.
THE interview last week in Le Monde could have been the sadistic reflections of any dictatorship's faithful servant: "It's efficient, torture.
So this article is not just questionable in terms of his responsibilities as a civil servant, it's also thoroughly unhelpful".
Like the ever-present servant, it whispers "Remember, user, thou art really close to some nice barbecue".
