Casting Off

The Second World War has finally ended and so begins a new era of freedom and opportunity for the Cazalet family in Casting Off, the fourth novel in Elizabeth Jane Howard's magnificent Cazalet Chronicles. 'Somehow, she could not bear to think about him. She seemed to have let him down from the start . . . She had a feeling that she was going to pay for that all of her life.' 1945. The Cazalet cousins are now in their twenties, trying to piece together their lives in the aftermath of the war. Louise is faced with her father's continued indiscretions and her mother's grief at his betrayal, while suffering with marital issues of her own. Clary is struggling to understand her father's actions regarding his time abroad at war, and both she and Polly experience unsuitable infatuations. Polly, Clary and Louise must face the truth about the adult world. Meanwhile, their fathers - Rupert, Hugh and Edward - must make choices that will decide their own - and the family's - future . . . Casting Off is followed by All Change, the fifth book in the series. 'No detail is too small to be included, so charged with significance is the material envelope of that lost world' - Tessa Hadley, bestselling author of After the Funeral

Elizabeth Jane Howard was the author of fifteen highly acclaimed novels. 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. 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.