Parade's end

This volume contains four complete novels set mainly in England and the Western Front of the First World War, in which the author had served as an officer in the Welch Regiment, a life he vividly depicts. The individual novels are: Some Do Not (1924); No More Parades (1925); A Man Could Stand Up (1926); and The Last Post (1928). The stories follows the story of Christopher Tietjens, as his life is shattered by his wife's infidelities and overturned by the mud, blood and destruction of the First World War. Tietjens, with his old-fashioned Tory values, is already out of step with the corrupt political culture of Edwardian England: his experiences at the Front and his developing relationship with the suffragette Valentine Wannop force him into a radical reconfiguring of his values as he participates in the post-war period of national re-construction. "Parade's End" is both a subtly perceptive psychological novel and a richly descriptive chronicle of the public events of a decade. Through Tietjens, his beautiful (and unforgettably cruel) wife, Sylvia, and the principled Valentine, Ford draws us into the world of the English upper class as it goes through a period of crisis and transformation.