“There's an independence about Mary - she's not influenced by anyone and she's very much her own person, she makes her own decisions. I understand her because I'm one of three girls too and I've always been defiant that I didn't want to do what they did.”

“Mary is a very well-written typical eldest child in that she puts her own needs at the forefront... She's not as inclined to conciliate or placate. Cora is fascinated by Mary”

“Mary feels she should have been a boy and then everything would have been so much easier. She fights against her femininity in a way.”

“It took a while to shoot the scene by the coconut stall at the fun fair, so Michelle (Mary) and I had a competition. I think she beat me 10-1 - she was uncannily good. The crew were very disappointed in me. To be beaten by a woman is bad enough, but one in Edwardian dress is really highlighting something.”

“Cora, the daughter of Isidore Levinson, a dry goods millionaire from Cincinnati, arrived in England in 1888, when she was 20 years old, with her mother as chaperone. By this time, even respectable rich American girls preferred to find their husbands amongst the nobility. Thanks to the successes of the earlier Buccaneers and a fashion for all things European, from interiors to dress designers such as the House of Worth, pursuing an English marriage had now become desirable. For these families, the many years in which Americans had fought to escape the clutches of colonial rule and create their own republic appeared to have been forgotten.”

“Should the girls decide to go for a walk, they would need to change into a different outfit, a light woollen tweed suit and sturdier boots - but on simpler days, such as for the garden party, they make mercifully few changes. Cora, like many married ladies in her position, takes the opportunity on quiet afternoons to take off her corset and wear a teagown for an hour or two before getting into her evening dress. Its huge advantage was that it was always ornately decorated but simply cut, meaning it was the only garment a woman could conceivably get in and out of alone, as it could be worn without a corset underneath. Worn between five and seven o'clock, it gave rise to the French phrase 'cinq a sept'. This referred to the hours when lovers were received, the only time of day when a maid wouldn't need to be there to help you undress and therefore discover your secret. Lady Colin Campbell's divorce had hinged on the fact that her clothes had clearly been fastened by a man who didn't know what he was doing; when her lady's maid saw her for the next change, the fastenings were higgledy-piggledy. But for Cora, the teagown is not for any illicit behaviour, just for respite from her underpinnings.”

“Susannah Buxton, costume designer: These three dresses demonstrate well the different ways in which we brought the costumes together for the show. Mary's dress was made for her, Edith's was hired - it was previously used in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room With A View - and Sybil's is an original Edwardian summer dress.”