Parade's End

"No More Parades" - the second volume of Ford Madox Ford's highly-regarded tetralogy Parade's End, was originally published in 1925 and has recently been made into a BBC/HBO television miniseries. The novel chronicles the life of Christopher Tietjens, "the last Tory," a brilliant government statistician from a wealthy landowning family who is serving in the British Army during World War I. Tietjens may or may not be the father of the child of his wife, Sylvia, a flippant socialite who seems intent on ruining him. Meanwhile, Tietjens' incipient affair with Valentine Wannop, a high-spirited suffragette, has not been consummated, despite what all their friends believe. The novel follows Tietjens in the army in France and Belgium, as well as Sylvia and Valentine in their separate paths over the course of the war. Ford Madox Ford (17 December 1873 - 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature. He is now best remembered for The Good Soldier (1915), the Parade's End tetralogy (1924-28) and The Fifth Queen trilogy (1906-08).