Home Place, Sussex, 1939. The English family at war? The sunlit days of childish games & family meals are over, as the shadows of war roll in, & a new generation of Cazalets take up the story. Louise, who dreams only of playing Hamlet, is brutally brought to realisation that her parents have their own secrets, passions & yearnings. Clary, who religiously documents all aspects of her life in diaries & letters, learns that her father, who was in the Navy, is now missing somewhere on the shores of France. & sensitive, imaginative Polly feels stuck without a vocation or information about her mother's illness
- without anything except for her nightmares about the war.