How to Run Your Home without Help, as its title implies, is a book first published in 1949 about housework. It is a fascinating historical document, and, from the vantage point of sixty years on, it is a funny and at times extraordinary bulletin from a vanished world. The wartime overalls were off, the pinny was put back on or, in many cases, worn for the first time, as the market in uniformed domestic help died away.