Elizabeth Jane Howard’s return to the Cazalet dynasty she created in The Light Years in 1990 will bring a thrill to the hearts of many readers. That quartet of novels, spanning ten years, countless love affairs and innumerable Martinis, was a pure pleasure to read. Her update on the family to the mid-1950s is in a similar vein: a lyrical read full of period detail, pricked with the sharp emotional intelligence for which Howard is rightly fêted.

While the previous volumes dealt with the upheavals of the Second World War, All Change examines a paradigm shift of a different kind. No longer able to rely upon the respect and loyalty once afforded the old family firm, and hopelessly inept