Remains of the Day is an extraordinary book. You may read it and still be unaffected by it, however if you try to look between the lines, you begin to see a incredibly moving account of an aging butlers realisation that everything he had built his life around was not what he trusted it to be. The story is set in one of the last old country houses in post and pre war Britain through the use of flashbacks and encompasses the passing of an era in Britain, that of a almost feudal system of butlers serving their masters in large country houses from which the whole country was run. Stevens, the main protagonist is one of the last of these butlers, and his story charts the downfall of this world, and consequently, everything he stands for. Alongside the frustration of a love story which both parties’ attention to what is ’correct’ and ’proper’ destroys from the outset, Remains of the Day has the potential to bring you to tears with its heartbreaking climax.