Elizabeth Jane Howard cover art

Elizabeth Jane Howard

A Dangerous Innocence

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Elizabeth Jane Howard

By: Artemis Cooper
Narrated by: Eleanor Bron
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About this listen

 Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress; but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to fiction. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit, won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize - she went on to write fourteen more, of which the best-loved were the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicle.

Following her divorce from her first husband, the celebrated naturalist Peter Scott, Jane embarked on a string of high-profile affairs with Cecil Day-Lewis, Arthur Koestler and Laurie Lee, which turned her into a literary femme fatale. Yet the image of a sophisticated woman hid a romantic innocence which clouded her emotional judgement. She was nearing the end of a disastrous second marriage when she met Kingsley Amis, and for a few years they were a brilliant and glamorous couple - until that marriage too disintegrated. She settled in Suffolk where she wrote and entertained friends, but her turbulent love life was not over yet. In her early seventies Jane fell for a conman. His unmasking was the final disillusion, and inspired one of her most powerful novels, Falling.

Artemis Cooper interviewed Jane several times in Suffolk. She also talked extensively to her family, friends and contemporaries, and had access to all her papers. Her biography explores a woman trying to make sense of her life through her writing, as well as illuminating the literary world in which she lived.

(P)2016 John Murray Press©2016 Artemis Cooper Art & Literature Authors Historical Women Celebrity Marriage Thought-Provoking War

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Critic reviews

Hugely absorbing
A careful and accurate portrait
Cooper has assiduously gathered material from everyone involved, and the details and perspectives are tantalizingly fresh
Looks set to be the literary biography of the autumn
In this fascinating biography, Artemis Cooper paints a picture of a complex and tricky woman
A careful portrait of a fascinating woman
Compelling
An unexpected treasure . . . It is as compelling and unified as a novel, while recounting a full, messy, complex human story . . . Cooper is respectful but never sycophantic, clear-eyed but never mocking. Familiar stories are retold but also reconsidered, and set in context. And the book pays the literary biography's ultimate compliment - it will send even those most familiar with the novels back to their bookshelves to revisit them
Elegant, sympathetic but clear-sighted
I inhaled every blissful word. A sad, revelatory, brilliantly written account of one remarkable woman's life in writing, cooking, and having sex. An unexpected triumph (Rachel Johnson)
Artemis Cooper's biography of Howard asserts the importance of Howard the writer, but also paints a painful portrait of a woman whose emotional life was often determined by the approval and attention of men
Cooper's biography is a careful portrait of a woman bursting with every talent except the capacity to inspire enduring love
All stars
Most relevant
I have read most of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s novels and found all of them well written, intricately put together, incredibly funny and enjoy the way in which Howard has the skill to describe the complexity of relationships. Artemis Cooper’s biography has led me to believe that Howard wrote Novels that were based almost identically on Howard's life experience. An incredibly sensitive, thoughtful and well researched biography that I would recommend to anyone to read. The book left me slightly disappointed in Howard herself as a person. I so wanted her to be a woman full of confidence in herself as a woman and a writer and she was not.

A life story well told and well narrated

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This woman slept with so many men and made so many terrible life - was a rather tragic figure. At the end it becomes more obvious that she was demanding and self-centred.
Would be a brilliant read if you've enjoyed the cazalet Chronicles as I did. The narration was okay but at the beginning you could hear the narrator's denture smacking about in her chops.

Addictive, frustrating and brilliant

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I’ve read all the Cazalet novels at least twice plus one or two others by EJ Howard and have always been fascinated by a writer who could bring childhood and the pains of growing up in a distant, almost foreign era so brilliantly alive. Since the main and most vivid Cazalet protagonists are girls and then young women, one couldn’t help but imagine there was a great chunk of the author in each of them and I longed to find out more about this woman who bestrode most of the twentieth century, so my first port of call was her own memoir, Slipstream - long before Artemis Cooper’s biography was even thought of, probably. Thus I came to her book with some trepidation, fearing the cool gaze of another pair of eyes might shatter some cherished illusions! I needn’t have worried: Ms Cooper’s objectivity and research (including plenty of interviews with EJH’s friends and family) reveal facets of her personality EJH might not have wished to show or perhaps been able to perceive, but she is never cruel or unfairly critical. Warts and all, the character that emerges in this biography is much more well-rounded, real and psychologically coherent than EJH’s own rather wraith-like self portrait!

It seems almost inevitable that a ‘well born’, beautiful, talented woman whose life spans some very interesting decades will have an interesting, full life, and so it was with Elizabeth Jane Howard who from late teens onwards was rubbing shoulders with the great and the good. Virtually every cultural icon of the twentieth century you can think of wafts through her drawing-room, or she through theirs. Never a dull conversation, no inarticulate acquaintances. There’s always someone prepared to lend a cottage in the country or a villa in Europe; the often broke Jane always manages to magic up the perfect frock for every occasion; restaurant meals, theatre, holidays always materialise just so conveniently!

This rarefied existence isn’t as offputting as it might seem - chiefly because of the sheer charm of most of the characters one encounters throughout this life, especially EJH herself, who is also (mostly) generous, thoughtful and a real grafter. Characters who lack charm are made to sound interesting just by dint of their awfulness! Nobody is ... ‘ordinary’.

Beyond the books Elizabeth Jane Howard is perhaps best known for her string of husbands and lovers, many of them famous. Here we stumble on the conundrum which Artemis Cooper tries to probe: why was this intelligent and fascinating woman who loved to love and be loved so hopeless at sustaining a relationship or emerging from one unhurt? Ms Cooper points to childhood neglect and abuse which, together with a lack of much formal education, generated insecurity and lack of confidence. The gawky teenager whose homesickness was so crippling she couldn’t spend a single night away from home becomes the clingy beauty who puts up with no end of awfulness on the part of some of her men, rather than walk away. At least half of her marriage to Kingsley Amis (her longest relationship) was marred by almost unbelievable cruelty and selfishness on his part, combined with drudgery and, Ms Cooper hints, self-righteousness on hers. This is no dizzy blonde popping pills, but a resourceful, gifted woman who can sew, cook, create gardens and beautiful interiors and, oh, write a dozen novels as well as scores of reviews and articles, alongside voracious reading. A sort of hollowness is suggested - a passivity beyond even the conventional image of the 1950s or 1960s wife. The ease and rapidity with which Jane Howard would embark on her affairs seems quite startling even by today’s standards; it’s not clear if she was ever gossiped or bitched about, which would have been quite predictable in that day and age. There’s never any suggestion, either in this book or in her own memoir, of EJH building up a longing for someone over time from afar; she finds herself in a situation where someone makes it clear he fancies her and it’s as if she thinks, “Oh, I’d better fancy you back, then,” (whether he’s married to her best friend or not) and next thing you know, she’s passionately in love!

Artemis Cooper exposes this strange psychology but doesn’t really explain it, probably because it’s so inexplicable.

But an untortured character wouldn’t make nearly such a good read! I highly recommend this book, faultlessly read by Eleanor Bron whose voice is perfect in capturing the clipped tones of the upper class of the times. Artemis Cooper has produced a thoughtful, entertaining, fair and sympathetic account of a full, perplexing, sometimes infuriating life, not nearly as well known as it should be, and I know I’ll be listening to or reading this biography again soon, just as I have the best of her subject’s.

Superb!

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Any lover of the Cazalet Chronicles will enjoy learning more about EJH’s life and how she wove her own experiences into her characters. Very sensitively read, although the reader had an issue with saliva, which was audible and grated on my nerves, becoming almost unbearable when using headphones!

A fascinating life, researched thoroughly

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I've read all EJH's books and have always found her intriguing. This biography is superb and so delightfully read by Eleanor Bron. I highly recommend it!

Thoroughly gripping

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