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Parade's End #4
Last Post: A Novel
Widely acclaimed when first published in the 1920s, Ford Madox Ford's sequence of four novels, known collectively as Parade's End, is one of the outstanding works about the Great War and British society before, during, and after that cataclysm. A major work of Modernism, it is an investigation of time, history, and sexuality. This novel, the fourth and final volume, is set on a single summer's day and follows the characters into the unsettling and often disorientating postwar world. With fluency, humor and great skill, this narrative explores their individual memories, hopes, and uncertainties, while also subtly questioning the current and future state of England.
253 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1928
About the author
Ford Madox Ford
501 books394 followersFord Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were important in the development of early 20th-century English and American literature.
Ford is now remembered for his novels The Good Soldier (1915), the Parade's End tetralogy (1924–1928) and The Fifth Queen trilogy (1906–1908). The Good Soldier is frequently included among the great literature of the 20th century, including the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, The Observer′s "100 Greatest Novels of All Time", and The Guardian′s "1000 novels everyone must read".
Ford is now remembered for his novels The Good Soldier (1915), the Parade's End tetralogy (1924–1928) and The Fifth Queen trilogy (1906–1908). The Good Soldier is frequently included among the great literature of the 20th century, including the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, The Observer′s "100 Greatest Novels of All Time", and The Guardian′s "1000 novels everyone must read".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
March 28, 2014
I finish the tetralogy with the very highest respect for Ford, and thousands of questions.
I plan to start reading now about Ford and the complete work, so I may add to this review in future. In the meantime, I rely on reviews of others for the information that Ford meant to stop with the third book. So there are parts of this one that seem to say, ‘So, you insist on knowing what happened after Armistice night, take this!’ with a couple of swipes of the lion’s paw.
For the pattern of stubborn honor, meanness and misfortune persist, in spades. The ‘events’ of this volume take place in the space of a few hours at a country cottage near a landed estate, and we don’t see Christopher at all. Instead, we finally hear from Mark Tietjens and his French mistress at length. Some questions get answered, some backstory added, and some conclusions reversed multiple times. Some of the most vital questions remain unanswered, which is the stony power of the artist.
It’s hard to review without spoilers, so I’ll focus on the arc of the work as a whole. What I most like is the equivocal nature of every character and almost every event. Perhaps an Englishman would know where Ford stood on the questions, but to an American it seems as if he is acknowledging both the weaknesses of the old ways and their strengths, and what was lost and gained in the war and its aftermath.
First, of course, he is intent on trying to make the reader understand what World War I felt like, and why it was such an evilly conducted war. Perhaps the only weakness here is to rely too much on Christopher’s repeated fuming about the idiotic war policies dreamed up by civilians in England that was then imposed on the troops and their officers. But Ford seldom shows you who did it and why, so you don’t feel quite the same rage. The one instance where he tries to show you a meddler, the horse vet in France, doesn’t really come off. He is more successful in sharing his outrage at England’s toying with betraying France, in ignorance of its corollary effects on the English army. Otherwise, Ford is tremendous at communicating the dirt, noise, muck, uncertainty, pettiness, fear and anger. He shows how the intensity of the stress can both accentuate and give cover to man’s worst inclinations, and yet occasionally engender the most noble actions. And of course he lays out the bloody irony and unfairness and hideousness of it all.
It seems to me that another part of what Ford is examining is national character. His characters and narrator certainly make nationalistic and racist remarks, but whether they are meant to be taken as true or as symptomatic of the culture of the times is unclear. Many of his French and American characters appear as stereotypes: the naïve, ignorant, nouveau-riche American girl, and the ultra-practical French mistress who is a bourgeois at heart, as well as being a frugal housekeeper looking to protect her future. But so again are his English characters ‘types,’ at least on the surface: the earthy peasant, the prejudiced outsider on the make, the wicked earl, the beleaguered Papist, the Pre-Raphaelite affectation run amok. Ford’s intent seems to be to acknowledge that national characters have some reality, but more to consider how they play out in individuals and what happens when those individual embodiments collide. Why do Valentine and Edith Ethel turn out so differently, for example? And what happens when you pit a woman raised by a liberal academic Latinist against an upper class loony schooled by nuns?
Ford returns to the country in Last Post, where No More Parades started. His love for the physicality of England is palpable on every page. He respects men and women who know how to do practical country things. He calls your attention to bird calls, the wildflowers and grasses, the horses from farm nags to hunters. There is a curious duality to No More Parades, though. He both reinforces an impression that England is vitally embodied in her old houses and furnishings and that the Americans are literally destroying them, and yet that the real, true core of England exists in the stone and earth itself. It was there before the Druids and it will be there after every Englishman is gone.
What else is Ford writing about in Parade’s End? Love, class, good and evil, middle-class and upper class moralities, politics, fathers and sons, sex, art, religion, women’s place and women’s rights, money… what isn’t here? A full review would exhaust Goodreads character limit.
I would be remiss not to mention the humor. I think my reviews of the first three books failed to say how funny they are. In this last book there is the running lampooning of the Americans and their money come to England after the war to acquire a veneer of noble houses and vintage furniture. And the beginning of Last Post, setting out Marie Leonie’s reflections on the insanity in this so-unFrench Tietjens ménage—and Christopher’s rejection of money!-- is parfait.
In sum, this is the work of a master of his craft and a man wounded to the core by what he sees happening to England. He is bitter, but clear-eyed and honest. He loves the land and its people, every lane and bird and tree. He believes in honor and the value of every human life, and he detests people who see them as expendable.
I plan to start reading now about Ford and the complete work, so I may add to this review in future. In the meantime, I rely on reviews of others for the information that Ford meant to stop with the third book. So there are parts of this one that seem to say, ‘So, you insist on knowing what happened after Armistice night, take this!’ with a couple of swipes of the lion’s paw.
For the pattern of stubborn honor, meanness and misfortune persist, in spades. The ‘events’ of this volume take place in the space of a few hours at a country cottage near a landed estate, and we don’t see Christopher at all. Instead, we finally hear from Mark Tietjens and his French mistress at length. Some questions get answered, some backstory added, and some conclusions reversed multiple times. Some of the most vital questions remain unanswered, which is the stony power of the artist.
It’s hard to review without spoilers, so I’ll focus on the arc of the work as a whole. What I most like is the equivocal nature of every character and almost every event. Perhaps an Englishman would know where Ford stood on the questions, but to an American it seems as if he is acknowledging both the weaknesses of the old ways and their strengths, and what was lost and gained in the war and its aftermath.
First, of course, he is intent on trying to make the reader understand what World War I felt like, and why it was such an evilly conducted war. Perhaps the only weakness here is to rely too much on Christopher’s repeated fuming about the idiotic war policies dreamed up by civilians in England that was then imposed on the troops and their officers. But Ford seldom shows you who did it and why, so you don’t feel quite the same rage. The one instance where he tries to show you a meddler, the horse vet in France, doesn’t really come off. He is more successful in sharing his outrage at England’s toying with betraying France, in ignorance of its corollary effects on the English army. Otherwise, Ford is tremendous at communicating the dirt, noise, muck, uncertainty, pettiness, fear and anger. He shows how the intensity of the stress can both accentuate and give cover to man’s worst inclinations, and yet occasionally engender the most noble actions. And of course he lays out the bloody irony and unfairness and hideousness of it all.
It seems to me that another part of what Ford is examining is national character. His characters and narrator certainly make nationalistic and racist remarks, but whether they are meant to be taken as true or as symptomatic of the culture of the times is unclear. Many of his French and American characters appear as stereotypes: the naïve, ignorant, nouveau-riche American girl, and the ultra-practical French mistress who is a bourgeois at heart, as well as being a frugal housekeeper looking to protect her future. But so again are his English characters ‘types,’ at least on the surface: the earthy peasant, the prejudiced outsider on the make, the wicked earl, the beleaguered Papist, the Pre-Raphaelite affectation run amok. Ford’s intent seems to be to acknowledge that national characters have some reality, but more to consider how they play out in individuals and what happens when those individual embodiments collide. Why do Valentine and Edith Ethel turn out so differently, for example? And what happens when you pit a woman raised by a liberal academic Latinist against an upper class loony schooled by nuns?
Ford returns to the country in Last Post, where No More Parades started. His love for the physicality of England is palpable on every page. He respects men and women who know how to do practical country things. He calls your attention to bird calls, the wildflowers and grasses, the horses from farm nags to hunters. There is a curious duality to No More Parades, though. He both reinforces an impression that England is vitally embodied in her old houses and furnishings and that the Americans are literally destroying them, and yet that the real, true core of England exists in the stone and earth itself. It was there before the Druids and it will be there after every Englishman is gone.
What else is Ford writing about in Parade’s End? Love, class, good and evil, middle-class and upper class moralities, politics, fathers and sons, sex, art, religion, women’s place and women’s rights, money… what isn’t here? A full review would exhaust Goodreads character limit.
I would be remiss not to mention the humor. I think my reviews of the first three books failed to say how funny they are. In this last book there is the running lampooning of the Americans and their money come to England after the war to acquire a veneer of noble houses and vintage furniture. And the beginning of Last Post, setting out Marie Leonie’s reflections on the insanity in this so-unFrench Tietjens ménage—and Christopher’s rejection of money!-- is parfait.
In sum, this is the work of a master of his craft and a man wounded to the core by what he sees happening to England. He is bitter, but clear-eyed and honest. He loves the land and its people, every lane and bird and tree. He believes in honor and the value of every human life, and he detests people who see them as expendable.
November 23, 2015
With one or two reservations, a lovely piece of work, well worth reading in its own right.
In some ways it suffers from the fact that it is the last act of the Parade’s End tetralogy. As a result, you have no choice but to judge it in particular ways – and in some of them, it fails. Graham Green was right. Imagine a wonderful wonderful symphony, as perfect as it is possible to be – and there you have the first three novels of Parade’s End. Imagine that the symphony has a long drawn-out final cadence, a fond farewell to the texture and majesty of the main oeuvre – and there you have The Last Post. It’s a lovely piece of work – but, viewed as a component of the whole, it falls down a little because it’s designed differently.
True, many of the loose ends of the previous novels are tied up in The Last Post. There’s a certain satisfaction in that of course. But it doesn’t really matter. Many a great work has deliberate loose ends. Ibsen remarked for example that he had no idea whether Oswald, the main character in Ghosts, was alive or dead at the end of the play: it didn’t matter. I'd say the same thing here: it would have been perfectly reasonable to end the entire thing on Armistice Day, at the end of A Man Could Stand Up.
The differing construction of the novel is quite demanding. It takes place over a period of only a few hours, after the Great War has ended, and consists exclusively of a series of (beautiful) stream-of-consciousness outflows. Most are from Mark Tietjens, the elder brother, but one – just one chapter – is from a servant, in an entertaining but puzzling form of doggerel; one is Sylvia Tietjens; and one is Valentine. In fact, from a structural point of view, it is arguably a kind of canine treat: a dog’s dinner.
All the same, the hotchpotch works, it really does! I imagine it would work better if it had been tried in a free-standing, independent novel. But this isn’t conceivable since The Last Post depends umbilically on the previous three novels for its substance; and for the same reason you can’t help but draw comparisons with them, and it doesn’t quite match up.
So, does it end the marvellous and memorable tetralogy on a high note? Not entirely, though it answers a few plot questions in a satisfying way. Does it impress as an innovative and experimental form of novel-writing, using stream of consciousness as an impressionist painter might use blobs to convey his meaning? You bet it does. Don’t miss it.
In some ways it suffers from the fact that it is the last act of the Parade’s End tetralogy. As a result, you have no choice but to judge it in particular ways – and in some of them, it fails. Graham Green was right. Imagine a wonderful wonderful symphony, as perfect as it is possible to be – and there you have the first three novels of Parade’s End. Imagine that the symphony has a long drawn-out final cadence, a fond farewell to the texture and majesty of the main oeuvre – and there you have The Last Post. It’s a lovely piece of work – but, viewed as a component of the whole, it falls down a little because it’s designed differently.
True, many of the loose ends of the previous novels are tied up in The Last Post. There’s a certain satisfaction in that of course. But it doesn’t really matter. Many a great work has deliberate loose ends. Ibsen remarked for example that he had no idea whether Oswald, the main character in Ghosts, was alive or dead at the end of the play: it didn’t matter. I'd say the same thing here: it would have been perfectly reasonable to end the entire thing on Armistice Day, at the end of A Man Could Stand Up.
The differing construction of the novel is quite demanding. It takes place over a period of only a few hours, after the Great War has ended, and consists exclusively of a series of (beautiful) stream-of-consciousness outflows. Most are from Mark Tietjens, the elder brother, but one – just one chapter – is from a servant, in an entertaining but puzzling form of doggerel; one is Sylvia Tietjens; and one is Valentine. In fact, from a structural point of view, it is arguably a kind of canine treat: a dog’s dinner.
All the same, the hotchpotch works, it really does! I imagine it would work better if it had been tried in a free-standing, independent novel. But this isn’t conceivable since The Last Post depends umbilically on the previous three novels for its substance; and for the same reason you can’t help but draw comparisons with them, and it doesn’t quite match up.
So, does it end the marvellous and memorable tetralogy on a high note? Not entirely, though it answers a few plot questions in a satisfying way. Does it impress as an innovative and experimental form of novel-writing, using stream of consciousness as an impressionist painter might use blobs to convey his meaning? You bet it does. Don’t miss it.
October 26, 2019
This novel, the last of the Parade's End tetralogy, was apparently written in response to the insistence, by a significant person in Ford's life, that he fill in more of the story. The last installment brought us up to the point where Christopher and Valentine are reunited after the First World War and about to become lovers; now we see a point in time several months later. As with the other books, Ford adopts the technique of starting out at a particular significant moment and then, via the characters' internal monologues, filling the reader in about how we got to that point. Once again the reader is left to work out what's happening, a process I find quite satisfying but others may dislike it.
The significant moment is the arrival of Christopher's estranged wife Sylvia, their son Mark, and the woman to whom Sylvia has leased Christopher's ancestral home, at the cottage where Christopher and Valentine are living together and surviving by selling old furniture to Americans. The new tenant of the ancestral home, Groby, is an American who believes she is the spiritual descendent of a French pre-revolutionary concubine--a nice poke at the pretentiousness of the nouveaux riches Americans who found rich pickings in an impoverished post-war England.
Christopher and Valentine are living with Christopher's older brother Mark, who has had some kind of a stroke and is unable to move or speak, and Mark's former mistress, now his wife and therefore Lady Tietjens. The moment of crisis where the action starts is that the American has decided to cut down Groby Great Tree; Christopher is absent, having gone to Groby to prevent that from happening; young Mark has come to ask formal permission for the act of sacrilege; and Sylvia has given in to her desire to see how Christopher and Valentine are living.
Christopher, being absent, is entirely missing from the various points of view; we see the recent past through the minds of Mark senior, his wife, Valentine, Sylvia, and occasionally the minor characters. The clearly horrendous episodes that happened between the last book and this one, where Sylvia throws herself down the stairs and pretends to be dying of cancer to get Christopher back, have happened offstage but they are frequently in the minds of the protagonists.
The resolution of the crisis is rushed, and I find it hard to believe that Sylvia would so suddenly admit defeat--also, of course, I missed Christopher (although that might almost be the point, because he is seen as far more highly valued via the different characters than he might be if he were on stage). Still, unlike some others, I am happy that Ford wrote this epilogue as a glimpse of life after the War, with so many of the pre-War values simply vanished and the country struggling to put itself back together. I've enjoyed reading the tetralogy immensely.
The significant moment is the arrival of Christopher's estranged wife Sylvia, their son Mark, and the woman to whom Sylvia has leased Christopher's ancestral home, at the cottage where Christopher and Valentine are living together and surviving by selling old furniture to Americans. The new tenant of the ancestral home, Groby, is an American who believes she is the spiritual descendent of a French pre-revolutionary concubine--a nice poke at the pretentiousness of the nouveaux riches Americans who found rich pickings in an impoverished post-war England.
Christopher and Valentine are living with Christopher's older brother Mark, who has had some kind of a stroke and is unable to move or speak, and Mark's former mistress, now his wife and therefore Lady Tietjens. The moment of crisis where the action starts is that the American has decided to cut down Groby Great Tree; Christopher is absent, having gone to Groby to prevent that from happening; young Mark has come to ask formal permission for the act of sacrilege; and Sylvia has given in to her desire to see how Christopher and Valentine are living.
Christopher, being absent, is entirely missing from the various points of view; we see the recent past through the minds of Mark senior, his wife, Valentine, Sylvia, and occasionally the minor characters. The clearly horrendous episodes that happened between the last book and this one, where Sylvia throws herself down the stairs and pretends to be dying of cancer to get Christopher back, have happened offstage but they are frequently in the minds of the protagonists.
The resolution of the crisis is rushed, and I find it hard to believe that Sylvia would so suddenly admit defeat--also, of course, I missed Christopher (although that might almost be the point, because he is seen as far more highly valued via the different characters than he might be if he were on stage). Still, unlike some others, I am happy that Ford wrote this epilogue as a glimpse of life after the War, with so many of the pre-War values simply vanished and the country struggling to put itself back together. I've enjoyed reading the tetralogy immensely.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 23, 2017
The last book in this most British of works leaves me scratching my head. One of the devices frequently used by great authors is to show a villainous or absurd figure, then by shifting the viewpoint to that individual, reveal a rational and sympathetic person dealing with difficult circumstances. Ford has done this in earlier volumes of the series, particularly with Sylvia. However, he opens this book by doing the exact opposite, taking two sympathetic and reasonable looking figures and revealing through their inner life that they are a couple of nincompoops. He moves on in a whirlwind of deconstructive character profiles and narrative flourishes which somewhat belabor the theme that people are just no damn good.
It's as if somebody told him that they were pleased that he was able to finish his series on an optimistic note with A Man Could Stand Up, and he wrote this in a fit of pique to correct the gross misunderstanding of his message. Thoroughly imbued with that characteristically English humor that is simultaneously funny and dismal, this book doesn't subvert the previous but it certainly recolors it, intentionally diminishing each character in the process. It's a sad world that Ford paints, and if we find hope in it that is not because we are brave but because we are ridiculous.
It's as if somebody told him that they were pleased that he was able to finish his series on an optimistic note with A Man Could Stand Up, and he wrote this in a fit of pique to correct the gross misunderstanding of his message. Thoroughly imbued with that characteristically English humor that is simultaneously funny and dismal, this book doesn't subvert the previous but it certainly recolors it, intentionally diminishing each character in the process. It's a sad world that Ford paints, and if we find hope in it that is not because we are brave but because we are ridiculous.
July 2, 2014
Free download available at eBooks@Adelaide.
Opening lines:
HE lay staring at the withy binders of his thatch; the grass was infinitely green; his view embraced four counties; the roof was supported by six small oak sapling-trunks, roughly trimmed and brushed from above by apple boughs. French crab-apple! The hut had no sides.
This is the last book of the tetralogy "Parade's End" but is not so compelling as the previous book.
Opening lines:
HE lay staring at the withy binders of his thatch; the grass was infinitely green; his view embraced four counties; the roof was supported by six small oak sapling-trunks, roughly trimmed and brushed from above by apple boughs. French crab-apple! The hut had no sides.
This is the last book of the tetralogy "Parade's End" but is not so compelling as the previous book.
August 22, 2023
The last of the four novels. It felt like it was at a remove, everything seem dimly through a veil after all the low drama of the books before. It made sense somehow. This was the sort of slow let down from everything building in the last 3 books. I’m glad I read them mostly pretty close together, I feel like you would lose a lot of the impact if you didn’t (or I would). I’ll remember these books.
April 17, 2016
I feel a sense of achievement (and I must admit, also relief!) at having completed reading Ford's tetralogy "Parade's End".
This stream of consciousness stuff really doesn't work very well for me. Some of it would be fine, but four books of it?! Still, I'm glad I had the experience of reading the entire work.
This stream of consciousness stuff really doesn't work very well for me. Some of it would be fine, but four books of it?! Still, I'm glad I had the experience of reading the entire work.
May 22, 2024
And we reach the end. What a journey. Full of creeping, sneaking emotions that you don't really recognize till it's over.
There was a part where I was like HOW could I have ever had sympathy for Sylvia, I wish she would die. And then by the end.... it was back.
I don't think I've ever read anything like this.
There was a part where I was like HOW could I have ever had sympathy for Sylvia, I wish she would die. And then by the end.... it was back.
I don't think I've ever read anything like this.
December 6, 2020
When Graham Greene edited the Parade's End tetralogy for Bodley Head in the '60s he completely omitted this last volume, and turned the series into a trilogy! He justified this act of literary vandalism by considering The Last Post to be sentimental, resolving ambiguities best left unresolved.
I rather think GG's real reason was that the series did not end in the same miserable way that he himself would have preferred to conclude it.
To me, this strikingly unusual conclusion to an already strikingly unusual work, is as absorbing as the first three volumes, even though the protagonist, Christopher Tietjens only appears briefly, in the last two pages. We learn more about his brother Mark, about his father's supposed suicide, and about his vicious wife Sylvia, told in a superbly executed stream of consciousness technique. It is a slow read, every sentence has to be considered carefully, picked up and looked at fr0m different directions.
And the experience is truly rewarding. Beats Joyce into a cocked hat, as one of the characters might say.
I rather think GG's real reason was that the series did not end in the same miserable way that he himself would have preferred to conclude it.
To me, this strikingly unusual conclusion to an already strikingly unusual work, is as absorbing as the first three volumes, even though the protagonist, Christopher Tietjens only appears briefly, in the last two pages. We learn more about his brother Mark, about his father's supposed suicide, and about his vicious wife Sylvia, told in a superbly executed stream of consciousness technique. It is a slow read, every sentence has to be considered carefully, picked up and looked at fr0m different directions.
And the experience is truly rewarding. Beats Joyce into a cocked hat, as one of the characters might say.
April 22, 2013
I strongly suspect that I cannot understand 'big' books. Books that are literary classics and great, full of symbolism and witty words. But it means, like like mathematics and PE at school, that I do not enjoy it. It culminates into something quite boring with constant ellipses, internal dialogue and stream-of-consiousness ramblings that don't really go anywhere.
However, I can respect this as a literary work. I just wish I could study it and write essays about it with other people who are reading it for the first time, asking difficult but interesting questions in a seminar type set up that would actually make me enjoy it.
However, I can respect this as a literary work. I just wish I could study it and write essays about it with other people who are reading it for the first time, asking difficult but interesting questions in a seminar type set up that would actually make me enjoy it.
July 1, 2014
I started Parede's End earlier this year and I fell in love with these books and its characters. I had seen the BBC adaptation before I started reading it and it helped me follow the plot more easily as english is not my native language I believe it would have been a slower read for me but I'm sure I would have loved it just as much.
As soon I started The Last Post I noticed that the things that happened weren't added to the BBC series, at first I thought it was this book wasn't in the author's original plan for the series and after finish reading I believe it would be just as good if he had ended in A Man Could Stand Up, but this "extra" book it's a true treat to the readers.
As soon I started The Last Post I noticed that the things that happened weren't added to the BBC series, at first I thought it was this book wasn't in the author's original plan for the series and after finish reading I believe it would be just as good if he had ended in A Man Could Stand Up, but this "extra" book it's a true treat to the readers.
July 30, 2025
Another version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... and http://realini.blogspot.ro/
Parade’s End has been included on the Modern Library list of the 100 best books written in English during the last century.
Available here:
- http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/...
The Last Post is the last tome in this wondrous tetralogy.
I have noted on the first marvelous novels in the series:
- Some Do Not, No More Parades and A Man Could Stand Up
Throughout I have been fascinated most by the protagonist: Cristopher Tietjens.
The fact that he has been placed in the same context with Jesus Christ is an exaggeration, but there is meaning in that.
Tietjens has quite a few elements that make him more of a saint than a human being, at least in some ways.
He is generous with his money to the point of not caring for it and indeed, refusing a huge inheritance.
In this final part he ends up working in a furniture shop, whereas the value of what could have been his estate is, if not enormous at least considerable.
When his wife is engaging in extra marital intimate relationships, Christopher Tietjens refuses to divorce her.
When asked by his father, he shows determination and states that he will never divorce Sylvia and he is consistent.
His friend takes credit for his brilliant work with figures, that seems to be a mystery for anyone else and Tietjens is happy with that.
A modest man, when another inheritance, this time from general Campion seems to fall in his lap, Christian is enthused to find that this fortune may be compromised because the general has been told his godson is a communist.
Gossip and rumors are flying around Christian and people think that Valentine Wannop is his mistress and she has a child with him, at a time when the two had not even kissed.
His father thinks he is a “macro”.
This was- I don’t know if it still is a pejorative- demeaning term for homosexual.
At the start of the 20th century, sexual minorities were not only discriminated against, but it was a crime to engage in same sex intimacy.
Tietjens was indeed aloof with women and seemed very often disinterested in warming up to his wife.
But he was very upset when his father practically took whatever a stranger gossiped about him and it was believed.
This is the main reason that he refused the fortune, coupled with the fact that this wrong belief appears to have finally killed his father.
In the Last Post, Christian lives with Valentine Wannop, sharing a cottage with his brother Mark and the latter’s wife.
Mark Tietjens had declared in the past that he would not marry Marie Leonie, because she is a “papist”.
But views change with age.
I thought in the first three novels that Christian Tietjens would never have a physical closeness to Valentine Wannop.
They will just stay platonic friends.
No real affair.
But I was wrong and I am happy for that.
And Mark seemed an obnoxious, patronizing and insulting personage, with his mean words about Sylvia and others.
That opinion is softened now.
But they have cut down the Groby Great Tree, a cedar that was the Symbol of Tietjens.
As a joke, they used to say that they would rather demolish the house if it looks like it would endanger the beloved cedar.
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... and http://realini.blogspot.ro/
Parade’s End has been included on the Modern Library list of the 100 best books written in English during the last century.
Available here:
- http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/...
The Last Post is the last tome in this wondrous tetralogy.
I have noted on the first marvelous novels in the series:
- Some Do Not, No More Parades and A Man Could Stand Up
Throughout I have been fascinated most by the protagonist: Cristopher Tietjens.
The fact that he has been placed in the same context with Jesus Christ is an exaggeration, but there is meaning in that.
Tietjens has quite a few elements that make him more of a saint than a human being, at least in some ways.
He is generous with his money to the point of not caring for it and indeed, refusing a huge inheritance.
In this final part he ends up working in a furniture shop, whereas the value of what could have been his estate is, if not enormous at least considerable.
When his wife is engaging in extra marital intimate relationships, Christopher Tietjens refuses to divorce her.
When asked by his father, he shows determination and states that he will never divorce Sylvia and he is consistent.
His friend takes credit for his brilliant work with figures, that seems to be a mystery for anyone else and Tietjens is happy with that.
A modest man, when another inheritance, this time from general Campion seems to fall in his lap, Christian is enthused to find that this fortune may be compromised because the general has been told his godson is a communist.
Gossip and rumors are flying around Christian and people think that Valentine Wannop is his mistress and she has a child with him, at a time when the two had not even kissed.
His father thinks he is a “macro”.
This was- I don’t know if it still is a pejorative- demeaning term for homosexual.
At the start of the 20th century, sexual minorities were not only discriminated against, but it was a crime to engage in same sex intimacy.
Tietjens was indeed aloof with women and seemed very often disinterested in warming up to his wife.
But he was very upset when his father practically took whatever a stranger gossiped about him and it was believed.
This is the main reason that he refused the fortune, coupled with the fact that this wrong belief appears to have finally killed his father.
In the Last Post, Christian lives with Valentine Wannop, sharing a cottage with his brother Mark and the latter’s wife.
Mark Tietjens had declared in the past that he would not marry Marie Leonie, because she is a “papist”.
But views change with age.
I thought in the first three novels that Christian Tietjens would never have a physical closeness to Valentine Wannop.
They will just stay platonic friends.
No real affair.
But I was wrong and I am happy for that.
And Mark seemed an obnoxious, patronizing and insulting personage, with his mean words about Sylvia and others.
That opinion is softened now.
But they have cut down the Groby Great Tree, a cedar that was the Symbol of Tietjens.
As a joke, they used to say that they would rather demolish the house if it looks like it would endanger the beloved cedar.
January 30, 2026
A wonderful finale to a tetralogy that I have thoroughly enjoyed on a variety of levels. To read something that so clearly captures the literary, social and political zeitgeist was a real privilege.
I have particularly enjoyed seeing the movement through into modernism in this set of novels. The first is a fairly conventional narrative similar to the best work of Forster and then the subsequent volumes become more
Modernist and disillusioned as time passes. This final novel is published in 1928 when some of the great works of the postwar era are entering the fray - and it stands up against them.
Few of my colleagues (I’m an English teacher) have read this and it sat on my shelf for years - I was put off reading 744 pages about the Great War. But it’s not that and by reading it in its four distinct parts with other books in between for a ‘break’ it has been an educational and enlightening read.
Well worth the 744 pages.
I have particularly enjoyed seeing the movement through into modernism in this set of novels. The first is a fairly conventional narrative similar to the best work of Forster and then the subsequent volumes become more
Modernist and disillusioned as time passes. This final novel is published in 1928 when some of the great works of the postwar era are entering the fray - and it stands up against them.
Few of my colleagues (I’m an English teacher) have read this and it sat on my shelf for years - I was put off reading 744 pages about the Great War. But it’s not that and by reading it in its four distinct parts with other books in between for a ‘break’ it has been an educational and enlightening read.
Well worth the 744 pages.
October 1, 2024
The fourth novel in the ‘Parade’s End’ series comments on the legacy of World War One. How the unsettling the post war years were on individuals and the destroying of traditions. The novel is set in a few hours of a June day in the years following World War One.
Christopher Tietjens is an old furniture dealer. He and Valentine Wannop live together, unmarried. They share a cottage in West Sussex with Christopher’s older brother Mark and Mark’s French partner, Marie Leonie. Mark has had a stroke and is totally dependent on Marie’s care. Valentine is pregnant. In the shorter second half of the novel Christopher’s estranged wife Sylvia and their son intrude. Sylvia continues to spread scurrilous rumours about her husband.
Another thought provoking novel in the ‘Parade’s End’ series.
This book was first published in 1928.
Christopher Tietjens is an old furniture dealer. He and Valentine Wannop live together, unmarried. They share a cottage in West Sussex with Christopher’s older brother Mark and Mark’s French partner, Marie Leonie. Mark has had a stroke and is totally dependent on Marie’s care. Valentine is pregnant. In the shorter second half of the novel Christopher’s estranged wife Sylvia and their son intrude. Sylvia continues to spread scurrilous rumours about her husband.
Another thought provoking novel in the ‘Parade’s End’ series.
This book was first published in 1928.
October 2, 2019
First of all I read this in two big chunks.
It’s very hard to rate this. I didn’t like it, but found the technique of the third person narrator interesting, but why at this time introduce new major characters. Mark is full! Christoper only appears in the thoughts of others, having dominated previous books.
It’s like a modernist Hardy! Not the greatest recipe for success.
Are they happy? It’s not terribly discussed.
Probably the only consistent factor is Sylvia’s inherent awfulness. She truly makes LadyMacbeth seem nice.
I’m glad to have finished this marathon & May be more disposed to it in a while, but this is an inessential last volume.
It’s very hard to rate this. I didn’t like it, but found the technique of the third person narrator interesting, but why at this time introduce new major characters. Mark is full! Christoper only appears in the thoughts of others, having dominated previous books.
It’s like a modernist Hardy! Not the greatest recipe for success.
Are they happy? It’s not terribly discussed.
Probably the only consistent factor is Sylvia’s inherent awfulness. She truly makes LadyMacbeth seem nice.
I’m glad to have finished this marathon & May be more disposed to it in a while, but this is an inessential last volume.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 20, 2025
interesting book and interesting end. You get to enter the stream of consciousness of Sylvia and Valentine but not Christopher, and you enter the stream of consciousness of a couple of characters who were not so familiar in prior books.. The ending of the series is realistic in its ambiguity and its heartwarming and horrifying elements. This novel (or the four novels that make up Parade's End) is much better than two other "great novels" I've recently read (The Idiot and Joseph Andrews) even though they all deal with an innocent saintly person in a cruel world. Christopher's world is the cruelest.
May 28, 2026
A strange, episodic, melancholic epilogue to the already elegiac main text. Last Post delivers perhaps the least subtle metaphor imaginable (my favourite kind) as England’s exhausted aristocrats literally sell off their beautiful antique furniture to the most vulgar nouveau riche Americans ever committed to prose.
There’s comedy in it, but mostly sadness: mourning a way of life that is dignified but brittle, and collapsing under the gravitational pull of modern warfare - a force so total that it obliterates everything that once seemed permanent and fundamental and replaces it with - Ford already knew by 1928 - nothing much at all.
There’s comedy in it, but mostly sadness: mourning a way of life that is dignified but brittle, and collapsing under the gravitational pull of modern warfare - a force so total that it obliterates everything that once seemed permanent and fundamental and replaces it with - Ford already knew by 1928 - nothing much at all.
August 6, 2026
Final volume of the Parade's End tetralogy and one which several critics, notably Graham Greene, long considered a mistaken addendum or blemish to the initial trilogy, perhaps because Christopher Tietjens is almost totally absent and the focus is mainly on his brother Mark and estranged wife Sylvia. Personally I enjoyed it the most of the four, perhaps because I found it easier to follow and it provided much needed closure to the whole story. Overall, I have to say Parade's End was one of the most challenging novels I've ever read and it took a certain bloodymindedness on my part to get through it, particularly the middle section. But it's clearly a masterpiece.
August 27, 2017
Having now got to the end of the 4 books in the series the final verdict is probably not worth the effort. The narrative is irritatingly scattered, characters come and go without resolution or much reason and the overall story is not particularly exciting. A disappointment after "The Good Soldier" which is one of my favorites. (Purchased at Ca' Foscarina bookshop, Venice)
September 22, 2024
And so it's over. Once again it's largely written in a stream of consciousness style showing the thoughts and feelings of various characters. The story arc is resolved in a satisfactory way. Various twists and turns lead to new revelations about previous events and there are some truths that we will never know. And that's okay.
February 12, 2025
Had not expected to enjoy the four books that make up Parades End so much. Surprisingly absorbing and emotional study of what is mainly a love triangle, with a few extra characters outside the triangle. Much of the story told through interior monologues. Stylistically interesting. Bill Nighy does a great job of the audio book.
February 22, 2025
Fourth and final book in Parade's End. Graham Greene said it was an "afterthought," and Ford "regretted having written." Greene described it as"more than a mistake--it was a disaster..." Not all the critics and scholars agree.
For me, I liked this one the least. This follows the 5-10 years after WWI and is sort of a Where Are They Now sequence. Though much artier than that.
For me, I liked this one the least. This follows the 5-10 years after WWI and is sort of a Where Are They Now sequence. Though much artier than that.
February 1, 2026
I did not realize this was the last in a series of books, so that definitely contributed to my confusion. But I found the stream of consciousness style off putting and the characters hard to believe. I did like the vivid picture of life after WW1 in England and the way it obliterated many of the norms of British society.
September 25, 2025
Different from the other books, but quite satisfying, although in this book Tietjens is shown only through the eyes of other people. It’s an interesting way to do it, but it mainly succeeds in tying up all the characters’ stories without a completely happy ever after ending. Just like life.
July 27, 2020
Told from different perspectives in a fragmentary manner, this engrossing novel ends Ford"s excellent tetralogy Parade's End.
January 7, 2022
"Never thou let thy barnie weep for thy sharp tongue to thy goodman..." (p.906)
"She would have liked to have his last words....But she did not need them as much as I." (p.906)
"She would have liked to have his last words....But she did not need them as much as I." (p.906)
November 20, 2016
This is a well written novel. Some may love it; for me it lacked appeal.
June 20, 2023
In the last book of the Parade's End series the focus shifts to mostly Mark, but also to Valentine, Marie Léonie and in a little part to Silvia. This book feels different from the previous installments. The ending surprised me. I wasn't expecting such twists and conclusion. It was so unconventional, rather modern for the time period.
August 28, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in September 2000.
Dorothy Parker thought that Ford should not have written this novel, which concludes his Parade's End sequence, and that he should have just left Christopher Tietjens destroyed, shellshocked at the end of the First World War, as described in A Man Could Stand Up. This book does make a strange ending, notable for the way in which it almost completely ignores the central character of the three earlier novels. Instead, his elder brother Mark, now a tubercular invalid, is most important; much of the novel consists of the interior thoughts of a man who though aware of the outside world and possessing his full intelligence, is virtually unable to move or even communicate. In keeping with this, The Last Post is virtually plotless, the only event it contains being a visit made to mark by Christopher's unpleasant wife Sylvia and the American woman to whom she has let the ancestral Tietjens house of Groby and whom she has encouraged to cut down the (symbolic) ancient oak at the centre of the estate.
Despite this strangeness, it is easy to see why Ford continued his story - it is mainly to do with the symbolic nature of the Tietjens family. Christopher Tietjens is intended to stand for the idea of the English gentleman, and I think Sylvia is meant to be a depiction of the way in which the British government treated these people. (This is clearest in the second novel, No More Parades.) Having destroyed Christopher and vandalised the heritage which formed him, Sylvia must be made to realise something of the enormity of what she has done. Then she will match the way that many in England since 1918 have mourned the destruction of the certainties that were at the basis of Victorian society. The presence of the American and her destruction of the tree also point to post war changes on the old estates, taken over by newcomers who did not understand or value them. Ford, having written about the effect of the war itself, now wants to say something about the effects of peace.
The writing of The Last Post, especially in the sections told form the point of view of the invalid Paul, is masterful. Even the minor characters are all different, each having their own voice - many novelists find it difficult to write even two people with noticeably different voice and thought patterns. Compared to Henry James, a novelist of greater reputation but who bears many similarities to Ford, Parade's End is consistently cooler and more believable; the neurotic side of James is completely absent even from characters like Sylvia.
Dorothy Parker thought that Ford should not have written this novel, which concludes his Parade's End sequence, and that he should have just left Christopher Tietjens destroyed, shellshocked at the end of the First World War, as described in A Man Could Stand Up. This book does make a strange ending, notable for the way in which it almost completely ignores the central character of the three earlier novels. Instead, his elder brother Mark, now a tubercular invalid, is most important; much of the novel consists of the interior thoughts of a man who though aware of the outside world and possessing his full intelligence, is virtually unable to move or even communicate. In keeping with this, The Last Post is virtually plotless, the only event it contains being a visit made to mark by Christopher's unpleasant wife Sylvia and the American woman to whom she has let the ancestral Tietjens house of Groby and whom she has encouraged to cut down the (symbolic) ancient oak at the centre of the estate.
Despite this strangeness, it is easy to see why Ford continued his story - it is mainly to do with the symbolic nature of the Tietjens family. Christopher Tietjens is intended to stand for the idea of the English gentleman, and I think Sylvia is meant to be a depiction of the way in which the British government treated these people. (This is clearest in the second novel, No More Parades.) Having destroyed Christopher and vandalised the heritage which formed him, Sylvia must be made to realise something of the enormity of what she has done. Then she will match the way that many in England since 1918 have mourned the destruction of the certainties that were at the basis of Victorian society. The presence of the American and her destruction of the tree also point to post war changes on the old estates, taken over by newcomers who did not understand or value them. Ford, having written about the effect of the war itself, now wants to say something about the effects of peace.
The writing of The Last Post, especially in the sections told form the point of view of the invalid Paul, is masterful. Even the minor characters are all different, each having their own voice - many novelists find it difficult to write even two people with noticeably different voice and thought patterns. Compared to Henry James, a novelist of greater reputation but who bears many similarities to Ford, Parade's End is consistently cooler and more believable; the neurotic side of James is completely absent even from characters like Sylvia.
August 31, 2013
The Last Post is the final novel in Ford Madox Ford's tetralogy Parade's End. The setting is after "The Great War" at Groby, the Tietjen's ancestral home, where Christoper shares a cottage with Valentine Wannop, his pregnant lover; Mark, his brother; and Marie Leonie, Mark's wife. The first part and the bulk of the novel focuses on the internal thoughts and musings of the characters. Christopher is physically absent from the action (if one might call it that). He is in America trying to salvage his diasterous antique business. But he is very much present in the minds of the others as they reflect on the changes brought about the war, consider the complexities of their present situation and try to gain a sense of direction for their futures. In a time compression covering only a few hours the reader alternately moves from the mind of Mark, then to Marie and Valentine and then on to Sylvia, Christopher's wife and Mark II, their son. In a swirling richness the reader is presented with the points of view of several other minor characters including Gunning, a family retainer and Fittleworth, an aristocraatic neighbor. Nothing seems to be entirely in focus as everyone sees things differently.
The second part deals with the current crisis. What is to become of their lives now that Groby has been acquired by the de Bray Papes, Americans enriched rather than devastated by the war? The changes have left all unhinged and adrift. Nothing will ever be quite the same. The culminating events are the cutting down of The Groby Great Tree, the symbol of the Tietjen's ancestral heritage and the death of Mark, the last of the family tradition.
The Last Post is perhaps the most Modernist of the four novels comprising Parade's End. Ford certainly presents the reader with the "Now" with none of the conventions of traditional story-telling. This is not a plot-driven portrayal of what characters do but rather what they feel, how they think, what they value and what they fear and regret. After forty-five years I don't understand how Ford escaped my attention as an English major. I also wonder, who else have I missed?
The second part deals with the current crisis. What is to become of their lives now that Groby has been acquired by the de Bray Papes, Americans enriched rather than devastated by the war? The changes have left all unhinged and adrift. Nothing will ever be quite the same. The culminating events are the cutting down of The Groby Great Tree, the symbol of the Tietjen's ancestral heritage and the death of Mark, the last of the family tradition.
The Last Post is perhaps the most Modernist of the four novels comprising Parade's End. Ford certainly presents the reader with the "Now" with none of the conventions of traditional story-telling. This is not a plot-driven portrayal of what characters do but rather what they feel, how they think, what they value and what they fear and regret. After forty-five years I don't understand how Ford escaped my attention as an English major. I also wonder, who else have I missed?
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