Customer Reviews

Dinner Is Served

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In "Dinner is Served", Arthur Inch hopes to leave us with the rapidly disappearing rules for old-fashioned gracious living. With his extensive experience in service, he is most definitely qualified to do so, and yet he only offers glimpses of his total knowledge. While many of the things in this book will never actually be used by the average person due to their expense and impracticality, there is still much that can and should be put to use in every-day living. While some may view these rules or standards as superfluous or even snobbish, the fact is that these have all been developed over many years and each has its own very legitimate reason for being. The complaints I have with this book are ones that could have been easily remedied. When discussing and describing the various types of tableware, more pictures would have been useful. Only select pieces have been illustrated, leaving the others subject to the whims of the imagination. And while he mentions several different napkin folds, and even specifies his own personal favorite fold, he never explains how to make these folds or shows how they are supposed to look. The sections on how to be the perfect host/hostess and guest, and on how to eat certain different foods could prove to be useful in reducing the potential for embarrassment in the future, and the section explaining the hierarchy of menservants was quite interesting, even if only as a history lesson that serves to demonstrate the logistical nightmares that formal dining can create.

Dinner is Served appeared to be a glimpse into an elegant corner of English society but it seems the contents stray little from the book's subtitle. The occasional insight into how tableware was maintained for sumptuous British banquets in the 1920s has a certain geriatric charm, but I was expecting scintillating revelations into the society that produced such marvelous dining habits. Arthur Inch was probably a world-class butler, but it he has little to say. The man served Winston Churchill yet only managed to squeeze a petty aside out of it, describing the late leader as "a right handful."

This should not have been published and marketed as a book. It ought to have been a pamphlet distributed to hoteliers.

This is a fine work for someone who knows little to start with, but for someone who wants to know, say, the proper way to hold a fish knife this is a complete waste of money. It is light and provides little information most well reared people don't already know.