All Change

As featured on BBC Radio 4 Open BookAs the old world begins to fade from view and a new dawn emerges, All Change marks the fifth and final volume in Elizabeth Jane Howard's bestselling Cazalet Chronicles.'She helps us to do the necessary thing – open our eyes and our hearts' – Hilary Mantel, bestselling author of Wolf HallIt is the 1950s and as the Duchy, the Cazalets’ beloved matriarch, dies, she takes with her the last remnants of a disappearing world – houses with servants, classes and tradition – in which the Cazalets have thrived.Louise, now divorced, becomes entangled in a painful affair, while Polly and Clary must balance marriage and motherhood with their own ideas and ambitions. Hugh and Edward, now in their sixties, feel ill-equipped for this changing world, while Villy, long abandoned by her husband, must at last learn to live independently. But it is Rachel, who has always lived for others, who will face her greatest challenges yet. And nothing will ever be the same again.'Like Ferrante, Howard’s fictional sphere is domestic and yet reveals deeper truths about human nature' – Elizabeth Day, bestselling author of MagpieAll Change is the heartbreaking and heartwarming final instalment of Elizabeth Jane Howard's bestselling series.

She is one of those novelists who shows, through her work, what the novel is for . . . She helps us to do the necessary thing – open our eyes and our hearts, Like [Elena] Ferrante, Howard’s fictional sphere is domestic and yet reveals deeper truths about human nature, Howard is a sharp observer of human drama and psychology, and writes about pain, loss and longing superbly well, I don’t know how I’d managed to miss [The Cazalet Chronicles] until now, but they’re absolute heaven, [N]o detail is too small to be included, so charged with significance is the material envelope of that lost world

Elizabeth Jane Howard was the author of fifteen highly acclaimed novels, including the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicles, as well as After Julius, Falling, Getting It Right, Love All, and Odd Girl Out. The Cazalet Chronicles – The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off and All Change – have become established as modern classics and have been adapted for a major BBC television series and for BBC Radio 4. She had one child, Nicola, and married three times – lastly to fellow author Sir Kingsley Amis. In 2000 she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, and in 2002 Macmillan published her autobiography, Slipstream. She died, aged ninety, at home in Suffolk on 2 January 2014.