Posthumous children's book from Elizabeth Jane Howard

Pan Macmillan imprint Mantle is to publish The Amazing Adventures of Freddie Whitemouse, a children's book by the late novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, in November.

Meanwhile Sid Gentle Films, the production company behind the recent adaptation "The Durrells", has bought the TV rights to her series The Cazalet Chronicles.

Howard wrote Freddie Whitemouse in the last decade of her life and one of her final wishes was for it to be published, Mantle said.  The story tells of Freddie Whitemouse of number 16, Skirting Board West, who hates being a small, frightened mouse, and wants to be a fierce tiger or playful dog instead. A sorcerer toad hears his pleas and agrees to allow Freddie a week in the body of each animal. What will he discover on his amazing adventure?

Mantle says the book, to be published in hardcover on 7th November (£9.99), has "all the wisdom, skill and charm of Elizabeth Jane Howard's adult novels". Publication date will be the third anniversary of the publication of All Change, the final novel in the author's The Cazalet Chronicles series.

Meanwhile Sid Gentle Films has acquired the rights to all five books from The Cazalet Chronicles in a deal negotiated by Sally Woodward Gentle and Howard's agent Ann Evans at Jonathan Clowes. Woodward Gentle said the novels were "totally addictive with the ability to floor you with their turn of events", saying her company was "thrilled" to have "the opportunity to bring this wonderfully epic family saga to a new generation of drama lovers".

A single TV series, "The Cazalets", was previously broadcast by the BBC in 2001.
 
Elizabeth Jane Howard died in 2014. A biography, Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence by Artemis Cooper, was published recently by John Murray.