The infamous British upperclass reserve and all that it has represented to the rest of the world and not in the least- Americans, is the drumbeat that propels Ford's "saddest story." The drums, of course herald the not too distant coming of the first world war; and the decline of European world order. Concealed by perfect manners and the props of empire and rank, the atrocities of the savaged and wanton "best people" are largely, at least consciously, lost upon our narrator- a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker and cuckold. Hailing from the city of Brotherly Love, apex of tolerance and patience and the illusive spirit of democracy, he witnesses the ravages of chaos, humiliation and intrapsychic violence. He watches this occur in the most fashionable and debauched haunts of Europe and onto the exotic occupied lands of the Empire. His three companions, a monstosity of a wife and the silently murderous Ashburnhams are the four who victimize themselves and those whom they touch, unstoppably, no will, no personal power. It is not, of course, a sad novel, it is more comic and tense with a bit of satisfaction at the demise of these three monsters and a blind fool. The barely conscious narrator, is just a pre-cognitive glimmer that, lost in the industry and scrambling assimilation, Americans would embody, briefly, perhaps in a world-view. Europe falls and America rises, just as the Ashburnhams would fail in their 'destiny' release the pent-up demons and the power to their American 'Friends.' We all know the rest. They, who were at the junction to the modern world and we to the post-modern wonder who indeed are the "best people."

The book stands alone for its artistic merit and flawless style. It is further, in my limited assessment, startlingly relevant to our present historical precipice.

Told through the eyes of an American this is the best story about how love betrays, and how people can use the heart against you. It is the story of two couples who holiday together whilst the wife of the narrator is sleeping with the eponymous good soldier whilst feigning a heart condition. Once you read this, you will never trust your partner again, but you'll pass it to strangers on the train, I know I have.

Ford Madox Ford (born Ford Hermann Hueffer) had the good fortune to have as his biographer the English novelist Alan Judd. The tetralogy "Parades End" which marks the end of the gentleman officer class and Edwardian England had its origins in Ford's experiences after his arrival at the Battle of the Somme (1916) with the 9th Welch regiment. Ford's commanding officer,Colonel Cooke, disliked Ford's age (too old), his special reserve officer status, and his literary reputation. Colonel Cooke wrote to brigade headquarters that Ford was "quite unsuitable to perform the duties required of an officer in this campaign" Ford was soon hospitalized with lung problems and sent home to England for medical treatment. He failed in his attempt to return to duty in France and was assigned light duties as a captain in the 23rd King's Liverpool Regiment. He was discharged in 1919 under category 19-"authors,gipsies, travelling showmen, unemployables">(page 308).Judd's sympathetic biography brings to life a writer described by Richard Locke in the Wall Street Journal as a "perennially neglected and rediscovered literary" giant.Locke said that Ford "ended up out of fashion and out of cash". He was the writer in residence at Olivet College, Michigan.Ford will be remembered as a major novelist who generously helped many British and American writers.In 1939 Ford and his long time American companion Janice Biala traveled to France where he died.

How I wish I could urge this enormous, engrossing, and satisfying novel on everyone who, for instance, loved Pat Barker's WWI Trilogy, or Ford's own THE GOOD SOLDIER, or Mary Renault's THE CHARIOTEER, or indeed anyone who cares about intricate characterization, a terrific love story, sweep and intricacy in serious fiction. The love story of Christopher Tietjens and Valentine Wannop, and Tietjens monumental battle with his vicious wife Sylvia and all the British ruling class who prop her up, will enthrall you. Let the Ford Madox Ford revival begin!

Ford Madox Ford wrote prolifically, with a repertoire which experimented with style, character and narrative across a variety of settings and subject matters. Ford's Parade's End is among the very best of his works. The centerpiece, Christopher Tietjens, seems on the surface to represent a now-commonplace theme in English literature--the "last English gentleman" metaphorically swept away by modernity in the aftermath of the First World War. The first of this set of novels, "Some Do Not", features an opening passage which is laced with brilliant satire, crystal-clear character development, and a style which is utterly accessible and utterly enchanting. Through the rest of this novel, and well into the next volume, Ford seems to be telling a straightforward "passing of the noble old things" story. But Ford Madox Ford is rarely so straightforward, and these novels are no exception. What seems to begin as a mere bemoaning of a passing age turns into a demonstration of the inevitability, and even the desirability of its passing. Although Ford creates a perfect foil to Tietjens to apparently illustrate the vulgarity and superficiality of the modern age, things are not so simple. Tietjens views his world as irreparably fading, but Ford understands that Tietjens' world may never have existed at all. Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga and CP Snow's Strangers and Brothers novel cycle both try to show the passing of "old England" and the marching in of modernity. Neither Snow nor Galsworthy, though each is wonderful, does as much with narrative style as Ford does here. Ford's novels seem to take a simpler approach to the topic by creating Tietjens, the representative of the "old order", and his wife Sylvia, the representative of the "new", but by the time that the plot is worked out, the reader comes to understand that Ford has created a hall of mirrors and metaphors, and nothing is as simple as it seems.

This is one of the great must-reads of 20th C. English literature. It's a shame that it's not required Brit lit reading in every college survey.

I find it very sad that this great novel has again gone out of print, perhaps never to reappear after Everyman had to put it on remainder. Granted, as the reviews below note, it is written in an elliptical manner with time shifts, interior monologues as substitutions for action scenes and other moderist devices which make this book, like the Ulysses of Joyce, for instance, or Woolf's To the Lighthouse, God help us all, a challenge to the reader. And let's face it. Only critics like, or claim to like, a difficult book. Parade's End has never been a best seller; it has never been a modest seller. But behind the challenge is a heroic life given to us fearlessly, without irony or cynicism; a story that simultaneously beats on us and disintegrates before our eyes; and, built accretively, below our consciouness until the final novel, the tapestry of all the dross and glory of our own lives--all this the result in large part, no doubt, of these very modernist devices (while Lighthouse shows us that modernism can be an empty stage too). Tietjens stands with Adam Bede as one of the most memorable and noble characters in English literature. We care about him, which is exactly why the modernist style maddens us here--we need to know what happens to him, to be rushed to the finish. But Ford will not let us. We have to be pulled deep into Tietjens, to experience as our own all of his humiliations, to hold hard and unbending with him in intuitive dignity against the moral folly of others and the emptiness through which they are hurtled. Toward the end our reading slows. He is become our strength, our safe harbor; we cannot let him go. I know of no more powerful multi-volume work after Proust, not Musil, Powell, Durrell, etc., than Ford's Parades's End.

One of the greatest books EVER written in the English language. Period. (Well, actually, it's four books, but they don't publish them separately anymore.) FMF is a modernist genius in the order of a Faulkner or a Woolf, with a beautiful style, incredibly human characters, and a mind-boggling knowledge of both the human heart and the physical world. FMF seems to be as quasi-omniscient as his noble last Tory, the main character, Christopher Tietjens. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that it's an easy book. Parade's End not a potboiler to read at the beach while you're getting a tan and sipping margaritas. It is a book that challenges the reader to let go of expectation and any hope of conventional structure, and to allow FMF's unique storytelling to settle into your gut slowly. It is a moral novel that doesn't moralize. A book about what it is to be good, to be a human being. FMF's beautiful style is even exceeded by his love for humanity and generosity of spirit. The sheer uncynicalness of the book--especially in this hollow, cynical age--is like a balm on this reader's eyes. This is one of those books, like Sound & The Fury, like Ulysses, like Pride & Prejudice, like Great Expectations, that EVERYONE should read.

Fans of Tudor history will enjoy this meaty volume which delivers a very different take on the life of Queen Katherine Howard...she is hardly the hysterical and promiscuous girl so often depicted. Especially interesting characterizations of "Bloody" Mary Tudor and Henry VIII, as well. Strictly for fans of the subject, however, or otherwise tedious reading.

Ford Madox Ford's "The Fifth Queen" - actually a collection of three separate novels - is a fictionalized account of the fifth wife of England's Henry VIII, Katharine Howard. As A.S. Byatt explains in her Introduction, "This figure bears little relation to what we have about the real Katharine . . ." and thus the reader should be conscious that Ford's Katharine - a young, pretty, pious woman who yearns for a return to Catholicism after Henry's split with Rome - is strictly fictional. That said, the only real failure of this work is that Katharine is the least appealing, least interesting character; we first meet her as a dispossessed ingenue seeking entrance to Henry's court around the time of his disasterous fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves, and it is this description which will follow her throughout the book. Even as she becomes Queen, it is almost by accident, surviving the machinations of Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal and the recklessness of her devoted cousin Culpepper. She is Queen by default. She constantly protests that all she seeks is a Catholic England - the "old ways" - and yet throughout she resigns herself to letting events happen to her, as if she cannot control the consequences of her own life. Indeed, her final speech to Henry where she confesses to an adultery which did not occur, becomes her last fatal act of passivity, for which she pays with her life. She cannot see that there are those who wish to help her and that her naive, narcissistic piety does not have to be her ruin. What holds these novels together is the rich supporting cast: the aforementioned Cromwell, who has his own sovereign Protestant image of England, free from the entanglements of Rome. There is the brooding Princess Mary, Henry's daughter by his first wife, who knows how to carry a grudge for her mother's divorce, the super-spy Throckmorton, the lecherous Magister Udal and more. Ford uses Katharine to show that the blind commitment to an ideal - any ideal - will only result in failure, that this world is more than ideas and faiths, but of people who are imperfect, people who will fail. It is a world five hundred years in the past, but it is also our own.

Intrigue and romance in the court of Henry VIII
Katherine Howard, armed only with education, wit and honesty, becomes the Fifth Queen, Henry VIII's fifth wife in this amazing historical trilogy. The plot-ridden court comes to vivid life as everyone high and low maneuvers for advantage. Everyone except Katherine Howard, whose unwillingness to scheme will make her queen and defenseless at the same moment. Even knowing the general story this is a fascinating and occasionally shocking novel, with a stunning ending...

I read this book for a class 30 years ago, forgot about it, and then saw it on a list of the top 100 novels of the 20th Century. This is a wonderfully constructed, thoughtfully written, and facinating story. Independent of the story and the issues of change and transformation thematically dominating the book; the style and prose are intriquing and creative. An easy read well worth the time to revisit or discover new.

The Good Soldier is woefully underread, and it fully deserves its somewhat belatedly-restored status as a true classic of 20th c. English literature. Ford Madox Ford, a friend and collaborator of Joseph Conrad, lays out a deceptively simple, almost trite, plot, one which we first think we've heard a dozen times before. But the beauty of this book is in the telling. Ford's narrator is piecing together the events of the past decade as he tells the story, and as such he jumps back and forth over the course of the last ten years, offering glimpses of events yet to come, going back and re-telling accounts of events he's already shared (though always with a new twist and revelation). In essence, the narrator is "learning" the story along with the reader, and he never (if ever) truly "understands" what's happened till the very end. Ford shatters forever the old 19th c. English novel where good and evil are absolute polar opposites, where characters unfailingly embrace either one or the other pole, where decency and "good" almost always prevail in the end, and where characters are immediately transparent (take Dickens, for example: a paragraph or two and you know all you need to know about each and every character he introduces; whether they're "good" or "bad," etc.) Ford uses the genre of the novel to create a work of literature where art mirrors real life. His characters are never what they seem at first meeting, events are fraught with deep hidden meanings that bubble beneath the surface, and there are three sides to every story. Beautifully written with moments of sparkling wit and levity, it is also an emotionally draining work that tackles love (versus what simply goes by the name) and propriety (versus what society says is proper). You'll want to flip back to the first chapter and re-read it from page one, knowing then what you know by book's end. A true masterpiece which I cannot recommend highly enough. This particular edition from Everymans Library is particularly handsome and well-bound, with insightful introductory essays by thoughtful critics (which, needless to say, should be read after the novel itself).

This is a great novel, and I'm sad that I had not read it sooner. Ford shows his strange position in the history of literature: this novel has traces of Henry James and Joe Conrad (both who tutored Ford) but also has an innovative narration that makes it seem very modern and readable. It also has a tragic, haunting story powering the interesting style. It's a good read, and makes us wish Ford was known for more than inspiring and helping later writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Many reviewers find fault with the narrator, but I can't see how anyone can but help but feel sorry for this poor man. His tale is indeed worth hearing.

Thanks for scholars like Nicholas Delbanco who hunt down biographical details that enrich our knowledge of famous authors lives. Here is a book that offers a savory meal for the literary gourmet. Henry James liked donuts. Stephen Crane chain smoked. Conrad the English stylist spoke with a thick Polish accent. Ford Madox Ford embellished his recollections with untruths. H. G. Wells treated offers of help with cocky independence.

The author contends that for a certain interval these men associated with and admired each others literary accomplishments. "South of London in 1900, a galaxy of talent assembled that beggars in accomplishment anything the English language has since produced." He provides quotations and photographs that demonstrate social intercourse between the big five. Between the initial overview and the concluding summary, three chapters provide respectively a view of Stephen Crane on a visit to England to meet the other masters of ficti! onal prose, a study of the collaboration between Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad, and an examination of one of English literature's most famous disputes - James vs. Wells.

I found the book informative and interesting and recommend it to any admirer of any of the five writers singularly or in combination. About those we admire our curiosity is insatiable. Did Shakespeare like his eggs over easy or sunny side up? We have his Hamlet, his Lear, isn't that enough? Some might say no. We have Crane's "Open Boat", Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", Ford's *Good soldier, James' *Ambassadors, Wells' *Time Machine*. Still, it's natural to inquire about the virtues, quirks, and foibles of their creators. *Group Portrait* gives us a taste of the traits that rounds out these illustrious authors.

A sad epilogue to which Mr. Delbanco refers in his lead chapter is that this literary summer was so brief. Crane died in 1900. Eventually the other associations wither! ed. By 1906 the friendship between Conrad and Ford had coo! led. *Boon* published in 1915 dissolved Wells' ties to James with its ridicule of the latter. For a while there was Camelot albeit a loose confederacy of brilliant writers. A genius needs a tough ego to sustain him for the long haul to fortune and fame. An alternate lesson from *Group portrait, perhaps one not intended, but nevertheless patent, is that collaboration must eventually give way to ego.

...and take notice that this book has a total of 352 pages, of which :206 (plus an 18-page introduction) are pure text; 123 are black and white illustrations; and only 8 (eight) color plates, most of well known and widely reproduced artworks by FMB, such as "work", "pretty-baa lambs" and "the last of England". If you are expecting a lavishly illustrated volume, you'll be as disappointed as I am, thus the low rating I have given. It is my personal opinion, and by no means I am judging the essay by Mr. Bendiner, which I have not read; for this you can read the review below.

F.M. Brown is one of the most fascinating, but neglected, artists of the nineteenth century. A book which takes his art seriously is long overdue. While some of the judgements contained here are arguable, there can be no doubt that Bendiner has done Brown justice. His comments are always subtle, alert to the ambiguities and complexities of Brown's approach. Bendiner has chosen to organise the book thematically, dividing it into chapters on Brown's 'Archaism', 'Humour', Realism', 'Aestheticism' and 'Social Conscience'. This approach has its problems, especially as the reader has to piece together Bendiner's thoughts on particular paintings, which may be scattered across the chapters. Sometimes it leads to diffuse commentary on important issues. Nevertheless, the approach has the advantage that Bendiner can emphasise the artistic principles of Brown's work overall - very important in Brown's case as critics have too often dismissed his art as 'illustrative'. Perhaps the best points are made in the opening chapters, that on the 'social conscience' can be weak, especially as it attempts to downplay the influence of Carlyle, a writer whose stylistic methods were very important to Brown - as is now increasingly recognised. The appenices containing Brown's own quirky commentaries on his paintings is a welcome addition to the text.