The Golden Hours

'I'm overjoyed to have this . . . The Golden Hours is a wonderful read' - Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina *One of The Times' 40 books not to miss this autumn* Continuing the story of one of the most beloved families in British literature, The Golden Hours is the brilliant new novel in Elizabeth Jane Howard's iconic Cazalet Chronicles written by her niece, the bestselling author Louisa Young. Our lives have changed so much . . . It's December 1962, and the Cazalet family are gathering to celebrate Christmas. With the family's beloved Home Place long sold, Polly and Gerald have offered up their rambling stately pile, Fakenham Hall in Norfolk, to parents, siblings, cousins and children. The old guard - brothers Hugh, Edward, Rupert and their sister Rachel - look on as the England they knew and understood fades from view. Cousins Polly, Louise and Clary, all now on the brink of turning forty, are struggling to balance the demands of midlife with their personal desires - however secret. And then there are the young - a new generation growing up in a society on the cusp of real change. In this spellbinding novel, familiar faces reappear, newcomers are introduced, and the legacy of the Cazalets carries on into the Swinging Sixties. 'Effortlessly authentic, pitch-perfect, funny, sexy and heart-wrenching, I can't remember the last time I lost myself so deliciously in a novel!' - Julie Myerson, author of Something Might Happen

Louisa Young is a writer and songwriter, a former journalist, a Londoner, and 'a masterly storyteller', according to The Washington Post. Her twelve novels include the award-winning My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You trilogy, which Elizabeth Jane Howard called 'a triumph'. She has also written memoir - You Left Early, a True Story of Love and Alcohol; cultural history - The Book of the Heart; and biography - A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott. Louisa is half of the children's author Zizou Corder, as whom, with her daughter, the actor Isabel Adomakoh Young, she wrote the Lionboy novels for children. And she has also made an album of her own songs, You Left Early, as Birds of Britain, with Alex Mackenzie. Louisa's work is published in thirty-two languages, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.