My wife and I watched the BBC’s adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End last week. Rather than a formal review I wanted to pass on a few random thoughts both of us had on the production. Tom Stoppard did an admirable job translating the novels to the screen. FYI—The Last Post was not included […]
Tag: Ford Madox Ford
Update (21 Feb 2012): I couldn’t resist reposting this photo from radiotimes.com. No additional info on airing dates, etc. Original Post (21 Sep 2011) I felt happy while downloading the BBC podcasts of Life and Fate (more on this in *intended* upcoming posts) but this notice makes me giddy. Well, at least what I imagine […]
Picture source This, Tietjens thought, is England! A man and a maid walk through Kentish grass-fields: the grass ripe for the scythe. The man honourable, clean, upright; the maid virtuous, clean, vigorous: he of good birth; she of birth quite as good; each filled with a too good breakfast that each could yet capably digest. […]
Last Post bugle callPicture source Sadly they whispered awayAs I played the last post on the bugleI heard them sayOh that boy’s no different todayExcept in every single way — from “Last Post on the Bugle” by The Libertines It had been obvious to her for a long time that God would one day step […]
Note: see the update for partial clarification The name of Christopher Tietjens’ son in Parade’s End isa) Tommieb) Michaelc) Mark juniord) All of the above The correct answer is D, all of the above. Or at least I think it is. Through Part One, Chapter Four of The Last Post I have seen all three […]
I browsed through the Ford Madox Ford Society’s last online newsletter and noticed in Newsletter 15 (30 March 2009) that “Max Saunders, Joseph Wiesenfarth, Sara Haslam and Paul Skinner are working on an annotated critical edition of Parade’s End (Carcanet)”. It is a work that definitely would benefit the reader. The Last Post seems to […]
I wanted to take a brief look at some quotes from poems by George Herbert (1593 – 1633) in A Man Could Stand Up: He hoped McKechnie, with his mad eyes and his pestilential accent, would like that fellow. That fellow spread seventeenth-century atmosphere across the landscape over which the sun’s rays were beginning to […]
Picture source Months and months before Christopher Tietjens had stood extremely wishing that his head were level with a particular splash of purposeless whitewash. Something behind his mind forced him to the conviction that, if his head–and of course the rest of his trunk and lower limbs–were suspended by a process of levitation to that […]
Well, it seems I can’t stay away from Ford right now. I had trouble starting Some Do Not… and No More Parades, having to read the first ten pages of each book several times before settling into the work. Not so with A Man Could Stand Up. So while I return to Parade’s End, I […]
Canadian soldiers in a trenchPicture source Tietjens had walked in the sunlight down the lines, past the hut with the evergreen climbing rose, in the sunlight, thinking in an interval good humouredly about his official religion: about the Almighty as, on a colossal scale, a great English Landowner, benevolently awful, a colossal duke who never […]
Picture source The one thing that stood out sharply in Tietjens’ mind when at last, with a stiff glass of rum punch, his, officer’s pocket-book complete with pencil because he had to draft before eleven a report as to the desirability of giving his unit special lectures on the causes of the war, and a […]
He said: “Yes I believe I did. I used to despise it, but I’ve come to believe I did…But no! They’ll never let me back. They’ve got me out, with all sorts of bad marks against me. They’ll pursue me systematically…You see, in such a world as this, an idealist–or perhaps it’s only a sentimentalist–must […]
Picture source Jumping down from the high step of the dog-cart the girl completely disappeared into the silver: she had on an otter-skin toque, dark, that should have been visible. But she was gone more completely than if she had dropped into deep water, into snow–or through tissue paper. More suddenly, at least! In darkness […]
Some Do Not Illustration by Stella BowenNote: check back for updates I will probably stay close to my usual pattern of posting during the read-along for Parade’s End. With “online resources,” I try to find sites or pages that are useful in understanding a work. If anyone would like to add a resource to these […]
Mel u at The Reading Life and I will be reading Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford starting in April. I’ve had the Carcanet Press version sitting next to the bed for over a year and I can’t take the procrastination any more. Feel free to comment as we tackle the four books. If you […]
The text for The Good Soldier can be found at Project Gutenberg. I have rounded up a few online resources on Ford Madox Ford. Since The Good Soldier doesn’t really lend itself to posts on the sections as you read through them, I approached writing about the book with the following topics: The Good Soldier: […]
The credits for The Good Soldier, produced by Granada Television, can be found at IMDB. I remember seeing this when it originally aired on Masterpiece Theatre and enjoying it immensely. I didn’t realize it would be 25 years later before I read the book. The movie runs very true to the book despite the difficult […]
One theme in Ford’s book is the inadequacy or irrelevance of social and religious institutions in the modern (at that time) world. That there is a moral and social shortfall is hammered home by his use of August 4th (the day Britain declared war on Germany in World War I) for all important dates in […]
I covered quite a bit on Dowell’s self-deception and moral blindness. The inability to face the truth or make any sense of events is his personal failing. That Dowell elevates his personal failures to not being able to understand the world or judge another’s character does not mean Ford agrees with him. I think Ford […]
“I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it.” This quote, from the start of Part IV, sums up the method quite well. John Dowell has undertaken […]