I must say, I am a big fan of Downton Abbey. It achieves close to perfection for a tv drama, in my view and I would love to visit Highclere Castle where it is filmed.
Since Downton Abbey does not run 24/7 (insert sobs here) all year, I was pleased to find another tv series, The Cazalets. We borrowed the DVDs from our local public library and enjoyed watching it. A nice surprise is that the patriarch of the family is played by Hugh Bonneville, also the head of the Downtown Abbey family.
The six episodes were filmed in 2001 for the BBC, and cover the middle/upper class Cazalet family and their estate in Sussex. The time is 1937 to 1942. The house employs plenty of servants but is not at all as grand as the home in Downton Abbey.
I read a recent interview with Elizabeth Jane Howard who wrote the 4 books the Cazalet series is based on, and she is now a vibrant looking 90. The Telegraph shows a photo of her, at 90 she is gorgeous, strong looking, uses a wooden cane and is holding a tiny brown cigarette. Even better, she is writing book 5 which will answer lots of my questions about the people in the tv series and what happened next.
The first book of the Cazalet Chronicles is The Light Years, which I want to read.
Have you read the Cazelet books or seen the shows?
