Elizabeth Jane Howard

Elizabeth Jane Howard

I have never read anything by Elizabeth Jane Howard, news of whose death aged 90 was announced today - but will do now. I am off next week on holiday for a fortnight to a place where there is blissfully nothing to do and no-one to see, so I have downloaded all five of EJH's Cazalet Chronicles onto my Kindle, as well as her memoir 'Slipstream'. For good measure, I have also ordered Margaret Drabble's 'The Garrick Year' and Anthony Russell's memoir about growing up at Leeds Castle. My ex and I attended a retirement course at Leeds Castle 20 years ago, made memorable mainly for the information dinned in to us - a group of senior managers plus a 'plant' learning the trade of such courses - by a wild-haired boffin from the Department of Health and Social Security. The news from the man from the ministry (let me remind you that this was 1993)  was that we need not worry about making arrangements for our estates. 'You will all probably live into your nineties, and will have nothing left to leave your children', he told us bluntly. He explained that if one survived into one's sixties, one was statistically likely to go on for another thirty years. Travelling had to be done in one's sixties and seventies. Thereafter, in one's eighties, one became less energetic and for a while one's expenditure decreased along with relative mobility . Then, alas, the last few years would become astronomically expensive. 'Care' etc would swallow up what was left of one's wherewithal. EJH was living towards the end of her life in Bungay, the town in Norfolk where I was evacuated towards the end of WWII, when the V2's began to fall on our bit of northeast Kent. R.I.P.