Continuing a series as beloved as the Cazalet Chronicles is no small undertaking. Elizabeth Jane Howard's five-novel saga has earned a devoted fanbase and a lasting literary legacy, one that could be daunting for any successor. But if anyone is up for the task, it’s Louisa Young—a celebrated and prolific historical fiction author in her own right. The fact that she also happens to be Howard's niece only adds to the sense that the Chronicles have landed in exactly the right hands.
Aaron Schwartz: How did the idea to continue the Cazalet Chronicles, originally created by your late aunt, come about?
Louisa Young: After the publication of Twelve Months and a Day, my romantic comedy novel about widowed lovers and matchmaking ghosts, I was thinking about what I would do for my next novel. I was coming up with all sorts of ideas that were all right but not great, and sending them to my agent, and she would say no. The idea came to me almost as a joke, because I didn’t think anybody would let me do it, or that it could be real. But I put it as a PS on the end of one of those emails: "Or, I could see if I could continue the Cazalet Chronicles." My agent didn’t know about my family connection but immediately thought I’d be a good person to do it, so we took it from there.
I’m curious about the difference in your approach to writing a novel like The Golden Hours—building upon a world that already exists and has its own ethos around it—and writing stories like Twelve Months and a Day or The Heroes’ Welcome, which are both from your own ideation. Is there a challenge in creating something new within this landscape and making it your own while still holding true to the identity of it?
It’s interesting you mentioned The Heroes’ Welcome, because that is actually the second volume of the My Dear I Wanted to Tell You trilogy. I have written two other trilogies as well: the Lionboy books for children [under the pen name Zizou Corder], and my first three novels, the Babylove books. So, I have in fact written a trilogy of trilogies. I’m very used to picking up stories when ostensibly they’re meant to be finished. If I like characters, or a world, I just can’t leave them alone. Of course, it’s different picking up somebody else’s stories, particular a writer of the calibre of Elizabeth Jane Howard, but I know the Cazalet books very well, having read them several times already, so it’s been an absolute pleasure and an honour to just dive in. It’s a bit like being let loose in somebody else’s toy box. In a way, you have free rein, but at the same time you know you need to be respectful and grateful, and you need to make the most of the opportunity.
Was your proximity to the series an inspiration for you early on as you started your career as a writer?
Jane herself was an inspiration. My first published book was a biography of my grandmother Kathleen Scott, who was Jane’s mother-in-law, and I interviewed Jane about her. That was when we really made friends as adults. She was supportive, and she was a wonderful example, as a lifetime writer still active into great old age.
This series is beloved by so many people, and there’s so much excitement about its return. What do you think it is about the Cazalet family that people gravitate towards so strongly?
I think it’s the fact that the lives described are not fantastical, and that really exciting, glamorous things don’t happen to them. They deal with the day-to-day within their own reality. Certainly during COVID and the lockdowns, when lots of people picked the books up, there was an overlap of experience: we couldn’t go where we wanted, or be with who we wanted to be with, which was the same for the characters of the Cazalet Chronicles during the war. People were separated and lonely and hemmed in, trying to do their best for the greater good within a national crisis.
