This first novel in the beloved Cazalet Chronicles books introduces us to a multigenerational aristocratic English family—and the tangled lives of their in-laws, children, and servants—as their country teeters on the brink of World War II.

From the opening scene—the maids, in their thin flannel nightdresses, rising at dawn to prepare the family’s morning tea—we are irresistibly drawn into the Cazalets’ intimate world.

In 1937, the coming war is only a distant cloud on the horizon. As the various Cazalet households prepare for their summer pilgrimage to the family estate in the Sussex countryside, we meet hearty Edward, in love with but by no means faithful to his good wife, Villy; Hugh, wounded in the Great War, devoted to pregnant Sybil; Rupert, who worships the body if not the mind of his demanding wife, Zoe; and Rachel, the unmarried sister, conducting a desperate clandestine love affair under the family roof.

“Vivid and compulsively readable” (Sunday Telegraph), this is a masterpiece in the tradition of Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey.