Elizabeth Jane Howard, CBE

Elizabeth Jane Howard was an English novelist. She was previously an actress and a model. In 1951 she won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for her first novel, The Beautiful Visit. Six further novels followed, before she embarked on her best known work, a four-novel family saga set in wartime England: The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, and Casting Off. The works were serialised by Cinema Verity for BBC television as The Cazalets. Her novel, Getting It Right, was made into a 1989 movie by the same title, directed by Randal Kleiser and starring Jesse Birdsall, Helena Bonham Carter and Jane Horrocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Jane_Howard