Louisa Young revives the Cazalet Chronicles: the family saga continues

The Cazalet Chronicles — Elizabeth Jane Howard's five-volume family saga that has sold millions of copies and never gone out of print — is getting three new novels from Howard's own niece, Louisa Young. The first of them, The Golden Hours, is published on 28 August 2026 by Mantle, an imprint of Pan Macmillan (The Guardian, 30 August 2026; Pan Macmillan, 28 August 2026).

The deal, announced in November 2024, gave Mantle three new Cazalet novels to be written by Young (The Bookseller, 11 November 2024; The Guardian, 15 November 2024). Pan Macmillan has also issued fresh editions of the five existing volumes ahead of the sixth book's arrival (Pan Macmillan, 23 August 2026).

The Cazalet Chronicles centre on three female cousins — Polly, Clary and Louise — alongside 52 other named characters, moving between London and a grandparental family home in Sussex. The first volume, The Light Years (1990), opens in 1937; the series closes in 1958. Howard drew the saga from her own life (The Guardian, 30 August 2026).

That decision to draw on her life came at the urging of her stepson, the novelist Martin Amis. Howard had been considering an updated version of Sense and Sensibility; Amis told her to write a family saga based on her own experience instead (The Guardian, 30 August 2026). Howard was married twice: first to the ornithologist and conservationist Sir Peter Scott, whom she left in 1946, and later to the novelist Kingsley Amis, whom she left in 1983 (The Guardian, 30 August 2026).

The family connections run deep. Louisa Young's grandmother was the sculptor Kathleen Scott — mother of Peter Scott and of Louisa's father, Wayland Young — which made her Elizabeth Jane Howard's mother-in-law during Howard's first marriage. In the Cazalet Chronicles, Kathleen Scott is fictionalised as the character Zee. Louisa Young was already writing a biography of Kathleen Scott in 1990, the year the first Cazalet volume appeared (The Guardian, 30 August 2026).

For readers, the lineage is more than a curiosity. Howard lived in Bungay, Suffolk, with her brother Colin, known as Monkey. Louisa Young is a novelist in her own right — twelve novels, including the award-winning My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You trilogy, which Howard called "a triumph" (Pan Macmillan author page). The Guardian's headline on 30 August 2026 asked who would dare take on Howard's fans; the answer is Howard's own niece.

Howard's literary career began early. Her debut novel, The Beautiful Visit, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1951, when she was 28. The Long View (1956) was among the first novels written in reverse chronology — a narrative structure that moves backward through time (The Guardian, 30 August 2026).

The BBC adapted the Chronicles for television in 2001, under the title The Cazalets, with a cast that included Paul Rhys, Lesley Manville, Anastasia Hille and Hugh Bonneville (The Guardian, 30 August 2026).

For fans of the saga, the wait between the fifth volume, All Change, and the sixth, The Golden Hours, has been long. Now the Cazalet family — and the Scott-Young-Howard family behind it — continues.