Parade's End

Both a portrait of a love triangle - between Tietjens, his beautiful and reckless wife, Sylvia, and the suffragette Valentine - and a depiction of life on the Western Front, Parade's End is one of the greatest fictional works of the 20th century. Ranging from the drawing rooms of England to the trenches of France, and moving between past and present, it is a haunting exploration of identity, loss and memory.

The first volume of Parade's End introduces the central characters: Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant, unconventional mathematician; his dazzling but unfaithful wife Sylvia; and the young Suffragette Valentine Wannop. It starts with the cataclysmic meeting of Tietjens and Valentine: a weekend whose violence prefigures the coming war.

The Parade's End tetralogy privileges not the conflict of World War I itself, but the impact the war had on its participants and upon society writ large. It is often referred to as one of the greatest 20th century novels, and one of the best depictions of war in literature.

This is the second novel in the series of four, depicting the meeting, courtship and ultimate fulfilment of two modern heroes, Christopher Tietjens and Valentine Wannop, despite social condemnation, personal travails and World War I.

A Man Could Stand Up, the third volume of Parade's End, brings Ford's characters to the 'crack across the table of History', across which lie their uncertain post-war futures. Divided into three parts, the novel is a kaleidoscopic vision of a society at climactic moment.

The Last Post, the fourth and final volume of Parade's End, is set on a single post-war summer's day. Valentine Wannop and Christopher Tietjens share a cottage in Sussex with Tietjens' brother and sister-in-law. Through their differing perspectives, Ford explores the tensions between his characters in a changing world, haunted by the experience of war, facing an insecure future for themselves and for England.