Volume two of the Cazalet Chronicles turns to the Cazalet children. Sixteen-year-old Louise, Edward and Villy’s daughter, moves out into the world, discovering at drama school a casualness towards language and sex that would shock her parents – as much as their secret lives would shock her. And Polly, now fourteen, finds that war cannot forestall the pangs of adolescence, while another fourteen-year-old, Clary, is the one hit hardest by the war: her father, Rupert, has been reported missing after Dunkirk. While the rest of the family gradually accepts that he must be dead, Clary clings to the belief that he is alive. “Deeply romantic without ever straying into the maudlin or sentimental . . . a triumph of authentic nostalgia.” (The Times of London)