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Imperious and mysterious

Of all the characters in Downton Abbey, Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, has always appeared to be the most likely to harbour secrets – if only because she’s so formidable that you would hesitate to ask her anything of a remotely personal nature. And to judge by trailers for the second big-screen outing for the Crawleys and their retainers, Violet (Maggie Smith) is a woman with a past.

How else to explain the fact she has inherited a villa in the south of France, seemingly from a man she knew before she got hitched to her late husband, Patrick Crawley, the 6th Earl of Grantham?

The Crawleys decamp to the Riviera, a journey that’s in part a holiday, but also seems a way to avoid a noisy film crew that is making a movie at the family pile. Alongside returning faces, new additions to creator Julian Fellowes provides the script, while the Him is directed by Simon Curtis, whose credits include (2011).