Should Elizabeth Jane Howard have brought back the Cazalets?

Some years ago, a woman wrote to Dear Mary, at the back of this periodical, with an unusual problem: she was a keen follower of new fiction but felt guilty to be seen lying around on sofas reading novels in the presence of her domestic staff. Mary advised that she should let it be known she had taken up fiction reviewing.

If there is anything in publishing to melt the realities of book reviewing into this delicious scene it’s the prospect of a new Cazalet novel. Not only do I get to read it in plain sight, but the 19-year break since the last one necessitates a re-read of the whole lot. Days and days, that means, immersed in the lives of that many-petalled flower of the home counties, the Cazalet family. So that’s 2,500 pages, ten whole Christmases at honey-coloured Home Place (1937-47) with the Brig, the Duchy, the self-sacrificing Rachel and her adoring friend Sid, the trio of handsome sons, extensively wived and mistressed and the impassioned granddaughters, Polly, Clary, Louise and Lydia et al, sharing secrets and sticks of tangee lipstick in the frosty morning light. All this, in the name of work. Bring me my bed jacket, my chocs in fluted paper cases. This is luxury.

It really is a long time since the last of these books appeared, and fans will probably have two questions. First: do we need another Cazalet novel now, when the last one, Casting Off, seemed to leave most questions answered, most relationships resolved and had an air of terminus about it? Then they may also wonder, not discourteously, whether Howard (now aged 90) can bring off such a sustained and delicate trick.