It’s no wonder Hilary Mantel said these were the books she told everyone to read, and wondered why she wasn’t as widely read as Jane Austen. Mantel suggested, in a Guardian article, that part of the reason Howard was underrated and underread was because she was a messy modern woman and was judged for it.
By men, of course, who love a double standard:
“One might ask why Howard’s whole body of work is not rated more highly. It’s true her social settings are limited; so are Jane Austen’s. As in Austen’s novels, a busy underground stream of anxiety threatens to break the surface of leisured lives.
“Time has sanctified Austen, though there are still those who don’t see what the fuss is about. It helps that she was a good girl, with the tact to die young; with nothing to say about her private life and her heart guarded from examination, critics had to look at her text. Modern women have less tidy careers. When Howard died in 2014, aged 90, the Daily Telegraph’s obituary described her as “well-known for the turbulence of her personal life”. Other “tributes” dwelled on her “failed” love affairs. In male writers, affairs testify to irrepressible virility, but in women they are taken to indicate flawed judgment.”
The resurgence of Elizabeth Jane Howard
Howard’s books, which have recently found a fresh readership in 2025, with many discovering them for the first time, and others returning with older eyes and heavier hearts. No one forgets her one time husband, Kingsley Amis. But why now? Why are sprawling, domestic World War II family sagas speaking to us again?
Perhaps it is because we are weary. After years of global crises, digital burnout, and political fatigue, readers are seeking literature that soothes without numbing their senses. The Cazalets, with their multi-generational entanglements and quiet reckonings, provide just that: a kind of narrative companionship. There is something deeply comforting in their slow-burning drama, their stubborn tenderness. It is a comfort not through escapism, but through witnessing characters endure and adapt in the face of everyday griefs and joys.
Cosy WWII family sagas do not sentimentalise war
Howard’s series is not alone in this revival. Publishers are reissuing long-out-of-print wartime sagas, while newer authors are exploring similar territory with fresh eyes. These novels do not sentimentalise war, but neither do they revel in its horrors. Instead, they sit beside the reader like an old friend, offering stories of resilience, domesticity, and emotional depth.
The appeal is, in part, tonal. These books offer a kind of literary hygge, warmth, familiarity, and richness. Yet they are not without their complexities. Underneath the tea trays and letter-writing lies a complex web of gender dynamics, class tensions, and the quiet rebellions of a generation on the cusp of transformation.
For readers today, there is catharsis in the slow stitching together of fractured families, the whispered doubts, the subtle strength of characters who survive not through heroics, but through sheer persistence.
Five WWII Family Sagas worth reading right now
1. The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Five volumes of intergenerational drama, capturing the ordinary and extraordinary lives of a British family before, during, and after the war.
2. The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning
Spanning pre-war Bucharest and wartime Athens, this series explores the psychological toll of displacement and the fragility of love.
3. Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
Set in the BBC during the Blitz, this short novel captures the absurdity and humanity of wartime bureaucracy and unspoken longing.
4. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
A nonlinear structure reveals the lives of four Londoners during and after the war, with a tender focus on identity and loss. This is another favourite of mine.
5. We Must Be Brave by Frances Liardet
A recent addition to the genre, tracing the bond between a woman and a displaced child during the war, spanning decades. Another must-read. Incredibly moving throughout.
In revisiting these sagas, we are reminded that history isn’t only recorded in battles and treaties, but also in domestic rituals, quiet resistance, and the long arc of familial love. And perhaps that is what we need most now, not escapism, but connection.
Read more
Elizabeth Jane Howard: Hilary Mantel on the novelist she tells everyone to read (Guardian).
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