The creator of Upstairs Downstairs, Jean Marsh, is riding high with an Emmy nomination and new series on the way, writes Roz Laws.

Writer and actress Jean Marsh doesn’t want to sound like she’s showing off when she mentions flying off to Hollywood.

What would maid-turned-housekeeper Rose Buck think? Rose knows her place, which is firmly below stairs, thank you ma’am, and not at Los Angeles award ceremonies.

But the fact remains that Jean, who created Upstairs Downstairs, has been nominated for an Emmy award for her role as Rose in the period drama, successfully revived by the BBC last Christmas.

It’s actually the fourth time she has received the Outstanding Lead Actress nod for the same role. She was also nominated three years running, from 1974 to 1976, for the original series and won it in 1975.

But the LA ceremony when she picked up the gong was all a blur, literally. She could hardly see what was going on because of problems with her eyesight.

After recent operations, she’s looking forward to being able to see the glittering event properly on September 18.

“I do have a sense of deja vu,” says the 77-year-old, who is first visiting Cotswold House Hotel next week for a lunch event.

“It’s wonderful to be nominated again after all this time. In those days I couldn’t see, so I’m not sure who was there! I was over-excited anyway and wouldn’t have been able to take it all in.

“I had glaucoma, which I’ve had an operation to correct, and I was also short-sighted. But obviously I couldn’t wear my glasses with an evening dress.

“I’ve now had double implants in my eyes to correct my vision. I was incredibly excited to be able to see for the first time in my life without glasses. People must have thought I was very conceited, as I was always looking at myself in shop windows.”

In her Emmy category, Jean is up against Elizabeth McGovern for Downtown Abbey, the rival ITV1 costume drama which beat Upstairs Downstairs to the punch when it broadcast first and which garnered more viewers.

The BBC was pleased enough with its revival to commission a second series, which starts filming in October.

It is partly shot in Leamington Spa, where PF Robinson – who designed the terraced townhouses in Belgravia’s Eaton Place – also built an identical terrace in Clarendon Square.

Set in the 1930s, it stars Keeley Hawes, Ed Stoppard and Anne Reid.

But the second series will not feature Dame Eileen Atkins, Jean’s great friend with whom she created the series, and who played Lady Maud Holland last year. She is reported to have quit because she was unhappy with the script.

Jean says: “It’s true she isn’t going to be in it, but I’m not going to talk about it, if you don’t mind. We are still very good friends and always will be, whatever happens with work.

“I remember once when she helped me out enormously, when I was behind with the writing The House of Eliott. I write in long hand and she neatly copied out my scrawl.

“I still write in long hand and send the pages to my secretary who types them up. I’m not online or anything. I use a writing board, A4 ruled paper and fine-nibbed pens. I like the whole old-fashioned ritual.”

Jean has written three novels which are all being reprinted now she is back in the spotlight with Upstairs Downstairs.

Along with Iris and The House of Eliott, there’s Fiennders Abbey, which she will discuss and sign copies of at the lunch event at Cotswold House in Chipping Camden on September 8.

The novel, about rural life in the 19th century and the romance between a gamekeeper’s daughter and the heir to the Fiennders estate, was first published in 1996 under the title Fiennders Keepers.

“I liked the pun,” she explains. “My publishers preferred Fiennders Abbey and that’s what it was called in some countries like Germany because they had no direct translation for the pun.

“I’d gone off the joke myself, so I was happy for them to rename it.

“It’s about village life and how it can change drastically. I get totally obsessed with the pulling down of villages and ancient woodland and hedges. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

“I was living in the Buckinghamshire village of Fawley Bottom when they pulled down Maidenhead Thicket, which was 1,000 years old. It got me to London ten minutes faster, but what does it matter? It was terrible.

“Now I live near the Newbury bypass. A very bad route was chosen, with half a village torn down in the name of progress.”

Jean has now been commissioned to write another novel and is considering taking the revolutionary step – for a woman who spends all her time, on screen and in print, in the past – of setting it in the 21st century.

“I remember someone asking me if Iris was set in the past, and I said ‘no, it’s up to date’. It’s actually set in the 1950s, but I considered that modern!

“The new book would be contemporary, though. I’d like to take a house in France and write there. I’ve been making some rough notes, but I don’t like doing an outline because I don’t like knowing exactly where I’m going with a plot.

“It takes on a life of its own and can sneak off without warning in any direction.”

* For tickets for the Cotswold House lunch on September 8, ring 01386 840330 or go to www.cotswoldhouse.com.