Parade’s End & The Good Soldier

Major BBC adaptations of Ford Madox Ford’s two most famous works, with stellar casts including Tom Goodman-Hill, Ruth Gemmell, Kyle Soller and Mark Bonnar

A forgotten great of British fiction, Ford Madox Ford wrote over 80 books, founded two trailblazing literary journals and was a friend and collaborator to some of the 20^th century’s most significant authors, among them Joseph Conrad, DH Lawrence, Ezra Pound and James Joyce. His two masterpieces – the ‘Parade’s End’ quartet of novels and The Good Soldier – are dramatised here, alongside a fascinating profile of the author himself.

Parade’s End – The scion of an old aristocratic family, Christopher Tietjens is ‘the last English gentleman’. Unhappily married to the beautiful, faithless Sylvia, he falls in love with young suffragette Valentine – but their burgeoning relationship is interrupted by the onset of the Great War. Plunged into the chaos of the trenches, Christopher must cope with both the terrors of battle and the radically changed world of post-war England... Tom Goodman-Hill and Ruth Gemmell star in this epic drama set in the years leading up to, and following, World War I.

The Good Soldier – John Dowell is the original unreliable narrator as he recounts ‘the saddest story ever told’ – a twisted tale of sex, money and betrayal involving two married couples who meet at a German spa in 1904. Over the course of the next nine years, they become close friends, but when Edward Ashburnham embarks on an affair with Florence Dowell, tragedy ensues, and the lives of all four are ripped apart. Starring Kyle Soller, Tonya Cornelisse, Patrick Baladi, Fiona O’Shaughnessy and Mark Bonnar, and adapted by Pilgrim creator Sebastian Baczkiewicz, this searing psychosexual drama is sharp, menacing and mesmerizing.

Ford Madox Ford and France – Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee tell the story of Ford Madox Ford, exploring his time in Paris and Aix-en-Provence, his tangled love affairs (including one with his protégé, Jean Rhys), his embroidered accounts of his own life, and his death in Deauville in 1939, three months before the outbreak of World War II.

First published 1915 (The Good Soldier), 1924-1928 (Parade’s End)

Cast and credits
Written by Ford Madox Ford

Parade’s End
Christopher – Tom Goodman-Hill
Sylvia – Ruth Gemmell
Valentine – Katherine Igoe
Mark/ Father Consett/Sergeant Major Cowley – Crawford Logan
General Campion – Gareth Thomas
Captain McKechnie – Michael Perceval-Maxwell
Macmaster/Ducket – Steven McNicoll
Mrs Satterthwaite – Monica Gibb
Edith Duchemin – Noreen Leighton
Mrs Wannop – Vivienne Dixon
Lieutenant Aranjuez – Nick Underwood
Perowne/Morgan – Matthew Zajak

Adapted by Robert Forrest
Produced and diirected by Patrick Rayner
First broadcast BBC Radio 3, 18 May 2003

The Good Soldier
John Dowell – Kyle Soller
Florence Dowell – Tonya Cornelisse
Edward Ashburnham – Patrick Baladi
Leonora Ashburnham – Fiona O’Shaughnessy
Major Hazleton – Mark Bonnar
Nancy Rufford – Ashna Rabheru
Jimmy Doyle – Ronan Summers
Maisie Maidan – Cecilia Appiah

Adapted by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Directed by James Robinson
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 22 November 2020

Ford Madox Ford and France
Presented by Julian Barnes and Hermione Lee
Produced by Robyn Read
Reader: Kerry Shale

First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 24-31 August 2010

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