‘Uniquely qualified’: Elizabeth Jane Howard’s niece to continue her Cazalet Chronicles novels | Books

Elizabeth Jane Howard’s much-loved Cazalet Chronicles series will be continued by her niece, it has been announced.

Novelist Louisa Young will write the sixth, seventh and eighth books in the series, which follows the fortunes of the upper middle class Cazalet family.

Howard published the original quintet of novels between 1990 and 2013, before she died in 2014. “The novels are panoramic, expansive, intriguing as social history and generous in their storytelling”, wrote Hilary Mantel in the Guardian in 2016.

While the first four novels cover a decade beginning in 1937, the fifth, All Change, is set between 1956 and Christmas 1958. In her new instalments, Young will pick up the saga in Christmas 1962 and trace the ensuing two decades.

Young’s first Cazalet book, The Golden Hours, will be published in September 2026 by Mantle, the imprint of Pan Macmillan that publishes the original Cazalet books.

“The world Jane observed and wrote about has not stopped with her observation of it. The characters are so alive still; the developments of their society continue. And, like many others, I want more”, Young said. “Jane looked at the huge effects of the war through the microcosm of her people’s everyday lives. In these books I will observe the immense social change of the 60s and 70s through the lives of individuals. How will they cope as modern England shifts and forms around them?”

Young is the author of 15 books, which include her Egyptian and first world war trilogies. Her novel Baby Love was longlisted for the Orange prize for fiction (now the Women’s prize), while My Dear I Wanted to Tell You was shortlisted for the Costa novel award.

Young “comes from the same family background as Jane and has lived with the Cazalet characters all her life”, said Howard’s literary agent and executor Ann Evans. “She is a wonderful writer and is uniquely qualified to continue the series.”

Howard was best known for the Cazalet Chronicles, which were adapted for BBC TV and radio. Her other works include The Long View, After Julius and Falling. “There is no author I have recommended more often”, wrote Mantel in 2016. Howard was married to the novelist Kingsley Amis between 1965 and 1983.

Young “is achieving something brilliant, in a voice completely fresh and yet one that I am sure will thrill Jane’s many existing readers”, said Mantle publisher Maria Rejt, who edited Howard’s All Change.