Young Martin Amis read nothing but comic books until his stepmother, Elizabeth Jane Howard, introduced him to Jane Austen, whom he often names as his earliest influence. He credits her with encouraging him to become a more serious reader and writer. [1]
Elizabeth Jane Howard, Lady Amis CBE FRSL, English author of 12 novels died after a short illness on 2 January 2014 at age 90.
Howard’s best-known works were The Cazalet Chronicles, a saga of English family life during World War II that traces the fortunes of an upper-middle class family in England, focussing particularly on the women (servants, wives, unmarried daughters, elderly women). The books provide fabulous social history, and the prose is glorious. Not a great deal happens, which shows that dramatic plot is not vital to a novel, but you just grow absorbed in the minutiae of the characters’ lives and personalities, and you can picture them all so clearly as you read. I highly recommend them.
Howard’s private life was a turbulent one. She was briefly an actor, then married naturalist Peter Scott, gave birth to a daughter during an air raid, had a very short marriage with another writer, and then became the second wife of Kingsley Amis. She was an inspiring stepmother to his children (and it was Martin Amis who gave her the idea for the Cazalet books), but invariably found that her husband’s writing was centre stage, while hers had to be fitted around domestic tasks and this marriage failed also. Her autobiography, Slipstream (2002), revealed how closely the Cazalet family was modelled on her own.
Famous for her love affairs as well as her novels, Howard told BBC Radio that “wars always make people pretty unfaithful, because they feel this might be their last chance.”
In her final years, Howard found peace. She had reconciled with her daughter after many years of estrangement and enjoyed the affection of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.