0:00:19 > 0:00:20Here in northern France
0:00:20 > 0:00:23in the middle of the Battle of the Somme,
0:00:23 > 0:00:26in a place the British soldiers called Sausage Valley,
0:00:26 > 0:00:31on account of the German barrage balloons that lurked in the sky,
0:00:31 > 0:00:34An overweight, middle-aged novelist
0:00:34 > 0:00:37with the unlikely name of Ford Madox Ford
0:00:37 > 0:00:41was caught in an artillery explosion and blown in the air.
0:00:41 > 0:00:43The worst of his physical injuries
0:00:43 > 0:00:46were to his expensive porcelain dentures,
0:00:46 > 0:00:48but suffering from shell shock,
0:00:48 > 0:00:51he couldn't even remember his own name.
0:00:58 > 0:01:01'It was a mental darkness.
0:01:01 > 0:01:03'You could not think.
0:01:03 > 0:01:04'A Dark Age!
0:01:04 > 0:01:07'The earth turned like a weary hippopotamus.
0:01:07 > 0:01:10'It was slow, slow, slow
0:01:10 > 0:01:12'like a slowed down movie.
0:01:12 > 0:01:16'The earth manoeuvred for an infinite time.'
0:01:21 > 0:01:25That explosion in Sausage Valley proved the trigger
0:01:25 > 0:01:27for one of the great novels of the First World War.
0:01:27 > 0:01:30And its now been adapted for television
0:01:30 > 0:01:32by Tom Stoppard.
0:01:48 > 0:01:52Ford was still recovering from the blast six years later
0:01:52 > 0:01:55when he began to write Parade's End.
0:01:55 > 0:01:59It's both a love story and one of the greatest accounts of the war
0:01:59 > 0:02:03and how it shattered the foundations of the old world.
0:02:07 > 0:02:09I'm Sylvia. Satterthwaite.
0:02:09 > 0:02:12Yes.
0:02:12 > 0:02:13My name is...
0:02:15 > 0:02:16My name is...
0:02:16 > 0:02:19Parade's End is a profoundly experimental
0:02:19 > 0:02:22and deeply personal novel
0:02:22 > 0:02:24written by one of the most extraordinary
0:02:24 > 0:02:28yet forgotten figures in British literature.
0:02:28 > 0:02:31But who on earth was Ford Madox Ford?
0:02:37 > 0:02:41I think he's been waiting
0:02:41 > 0:02:45to be rediscovered on a big scale for a long time now.
0:02:45 > 0:02:49Ford has been forgotten largely through his own fault.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53He was a self-saboteur. He stumbled through a whole sequence
0:02:53 > 0:02:56of damaging scandals in his personal life
0:02:56 > 0:02:58and yet he turns out to be
0:02:58 > 0:03:01one of the most appealing characters in literature.
0:03:02 > 0:03:05Ford Madox Ford didn't take himself terribly seriously.
0:03:05 > 0:03:10That self-deprecation was one of his greatest charms.
0:03:10 > 0:03:14He enjoyed a surprisingly rich and complicated love life.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17If he walked in you wouldn't think "Gosh, what a glamorous creature",
0:03:17 > 0:03:19but he was irresistible to women
0:03:19 > 0:03:22because he fell in love with them immediately.
0:03:22 > 0:03:24And this huge emotion would pour out.
0:03:24 > 0:03:27And also he seemed to be in deep trouble.
0:03:27 > 0:03:31There was a sense of sadness and melancholy.
0:03:31 > 0:03:33Yet despite this vulnerability,
0:03:33 > 0:03:37Ford was immensely sociable and unbelievably well-connected.
0:03:37 > 0:03:40He seems to have known, and often worked, with every writer
0:03:40 > 0:03:42and many of the artists of his era.
0:03:42 > 0:03:45Ford was one of the outstanding voices
0:03:45 > 0:03:48in the invention of modern fiction.
0:03:48 > 0:03:50This is a man who wrote over 18 novels
0:03:50 > 0:03:53and 400 essays
0:03:53 > 0:03:56and endless books of memoirs.
0:03:56 > 0:03:58He wrote as he breathed.
0:03:59 > 0:04:00On either side of the Great War,
0:04:00 > 0:04:03Ford produced two masterpieces,
0:04:03 > 0:04:06the most famous of which is The Good Soldier.
0:04:07 > 0:04:12The Good Soldier is quite widely recognised as a masterpiece
0:04:12 > 0:04:16and Parade's End isn't and wasn't.
0:04:16 > 0:04:22Dare I say that I think Parade's End is a greater work?
0:04:22 > 0:04:23You do? Why would you say that?
0:04:23 > 0:04:26Its just richer, the canvas is broad.
0:04:27 > 0:04:31And, of course, it's an incredibly ambitious work, isn't it?
0:04:31 > 0:04:32It's really four novels in one.
0:04:32 > 0:04:37Parade's End is a demonstration of the art of the novel.
0:04:40 > 0:04:43Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer
0:04:43 > 0:04:49was born in London in 1873 and brought up in leafy Brook Green
0:04:49 > 0:04:51It wasn't until his mid-40s
0:04:51 > 0:04:54that he disposed of his German father's surname
0:04:54 > 0:04:57and became Ford Madox Ford.
0:04:59 > 0:05:02His mother was the daughter of the great pre-Raphaelite painter,
0:05:02 > 0:05:05Ford Madox Brown.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08Brown was a doting grandfather,
0:05:08 > 0:05:10who liked to use his grandchildren as models.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15He painted the young Ford, aged four,
0:05:15 > 0:05:20in his Fitzroy Square studio in the guise of William Tell's son.
0:05:21 > 0:05:26That direct gaze, that look of trust in the young Ford's eyes
0:05:26 > 0:05:28says a lot about their relationship.
0:05:28 > 0:05:33Ford later called his grandfather, "The best man I ever knew."
0:05:37 > 0:05:39Brown's painting and the way he looked at the world
0:05:39 > 0:05:42made a lifelong impression on his grandson.
0:05:44 > 0:05:46He saw the world in radiant colour
0:05:46 > 0:05:49but unlike his pre-Raphaelite contemporaries,
0:05:49 > 0:05:53also revealed the grit, sweat and detail of modern life.
0:05:55 > 0:05:58What is it that makes him such a powerful figure,
0:05:58 > 0:06:00especially for Ford?
0:06:00 > 0:06:02Because, I think, he was an innovator.
0:06:02 > 0:06:07As a character, he was a maverick, an eccentric,
0:06:07 > 0:06:13he was prepared to stand up for what he thought was right in art
0:06:13 > 0:06:16and he breaks the mould.
0:06:16 > 0:06:19- This great picture here... - Yes, The Last of England.
0:06:19 > 0:06:22Well, this is about the great emigration movement
0:06:22 > 0:06:27in the middle of the century, when after the industrial revolution,
0:06:27 > 0:06:30in a time of economic hardship for people,
0:06:30 > 0:06:32particularly for the middle classes, they have no option,
0:06:32 > 0:06:35maybe they have to leave England.
0:06:35 > 0:06:40- Brown puts himself...- And his wife. - ..and Emma into the picture.
0:06:40 > 0:06:44And here you see him with his brooding
0:06:44 > 0:06:48and moody, apprehensive features.
0:06:48 > 0:06:51Look at the little strands of hair across her forehead.
0:06:51 > 0:06:55Look at her hand gripping her child, the baby's hand.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58- Absolutely.- And her gloved hand.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01- It's pinching her hand.- It is.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04The skin is all blue and puckered.
0:07:04 > 0:07:07Its an investigation of character, if you like.
0:07:07 > 0:07:12I always think that Brown is a painter who thinks like a novelist
0:07:12 > 0:07:16and Ford is a novelist who sees like an artist,
0:07:16 > 0:07:20and specifically, like a pre-Raphaelite artist,
0:07:20 > 0:07:22in all that detail and super-realism.
0:07:22 > 0:07:26Grandfather Brown imprinted a whole range of ideas
0:07:26 > 0:07:30into the young Ford's DNA, including a macro-lens for an eye,
0:07:30 > 0:07:33an uncompromising desire to modernise
0:07:33 > 0:07:39and unconventional social attitudes, especially when it came to women.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43Both grandfather and grandson had unsettled
0:07:43 > 0:07:46and highly unusual love lives.
0:07:46 > 0:07:50For Ford, the confusion and guilt in his personal relationships
0:07:50 > 0:07:55became the fuel and the theme of much of his greatest work.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59Ford is a writer who's consumed with the idea of love.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03There must be love. It gives the meaning to life,
0:08:03 > 0:08:07and yet love is the most savage and destructive thing possible.
0:08:07 > 0:08:11"The real fierceness of desire withering up the soul of a man
0:08:11 > 0:08:15"is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves.
0:08:15 > 0:08:17"He desires to see with the same eyes,
0:08:17 > 0:08:21"to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears,
0:08:21 > 0:08:27"to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported.
0:08:27 > 0:08:30"We are all so afraid, we are all so alone,
0:08:30 > 0:08:33"we all so need from the outside
0:08:33 > 0:08:37"the assurance of our own worthiness to exist."
0:08:44 > 0:08:46Ford met his first love, Elsie,
0:08:46 > 0:08:49when they were still children at boarding school in Folkestone.
0:08:49 > 0:08:52They became classroom sweethearts
0:08:52 > 0:08:56and ten years later, they were still passionately in love.
0:08:58 > 0:09:02But Elsie's parents were unimpressed with their daughter's boyfriend.
0:09:03 > 0:09:06Ford was a totally unsuitable match for their daughter.
0:09:06 > 0:09:10They clearly quite liked him as a person but just felt, you know,
0:09:10 > 0:09:13that they should take the heat out of the relationship a bit
0:09:13 > 0:09:15and of course, they did it in such a heavy-handed way
0:09:15 > 0:09:19that it made things worse. They tried locking Elsie in the house
0:09:19 > 0:09:20and not letting her out to see Ford.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25Ford urged Elsie to elope.
0:09:25 > 0:09:27"Do this no matter what happens.
0:09:27 > 0:09:29"Tonight is a wild and wet night.
0:09:29 > 0:09:31"It is the last night of the old time.
0:09:31 > 0:09:34"Something truer and better lies before us.
0:09:34 > 0:09:36"Be firm and hope,
0:09:36 > 0:09:41"better break down utterly and die than give in any way to deceits.
0:09:41 > 0:09:44"Hold yourself aloof and love me."
0:09:44 > 0:09:47On the way home to Kent with her sister, Mary,
0:09:47 > 0:09:51Elsie jumped off the train and boarded another train
0:09:51 > 0:09:53heading in the opposite direction.
0:09:53 > 0:09:56Mary telegrammed to alert her father.
0:09:56 > 0:10:01"Elsie has gone from Ashford. Beware Dover train. Mary."
0:10:01 > 0:10:05"Elsie not turned up. Look out at London stations."
0:10:05 > 0:10:07She even went off to Clifton near Bristol
0:10:07 > 0:10:10where it had been arranged for her to stay in secret
0:10:10 > 0:10:13with a friend of the family
0:10:13 > 0:10:16and Ford sort of went and joined her there
0:10:16 > 0:10:21and they got married there secretly, having lied about both their ages
0:10:21 > 0:10:25because Ford was only 20 and Elsie was three years younger.
0:10:25 > 0:10:28So they had to say that he was 24 and she was just 21
0:10:28 > 0:10:29so they could get married.
0:10:29 > 0:10:31It was also a very romantic thing to do
0:10:31 > 0:10:35and I think they felt they were, you know, living in a novel.
0:10:35 > 0:10:39They thought it was rather a romantic, novelistic escapade,
0:10:39 > 0:10:40the whole thing.
0:10:45 > 0:10:48This was the first of a slew of scandals that dogged Ford's life
0:10:48 > 0:10:51and was responsible for he and Elsie's decision
0:10:51 > 0:10:55to begin their marriage in a remote corner of Kent.
0:10:56 > 0:10:59Bloomfield Villa was cold and damp
0:10:59 > 0:11:02and the bohemian couple lived on the edge of poverty.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05But there was never much question that Ford
0:11:05 > 0:11:07would earn his living as a writer and here in Bonnington,
0:11:07 > 0:11:11he worked on a biography of his beloved grandfather
0:11:11 > 0:11:16and produced a number of poems, but isolation and money worries
0:11:16 > 0:11:20and Elsie's poor health quickly put the dampeners on the newlyweds.
0:11:22 > 0:11:25"I wonder why we toiled upon the earth
0:11:25 > 0:11:28"From sunrise until sunset, dug and delved,
0:11:28 > 0:11:32"Crook-backed, cramp-fingered, making little marks
0:11:32 > 0:11:34"On the unmoving bosoms of the hills,
0:11:34 > 0:11:36"And nothing came of it."
0:11:41 > 0:11:43But it was here in Kent
0:11:43 > 0:11:47that Ford made the most important creative relationship of his life
0:11:47 > 0:11:50when he and Elsie moved from the edge of the marshes
0:11:50 > 0:11:54to this small farmhouse on the downs.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57- I see there you've got a plaque to Conrad.- We do.
0:11:57 > 0:12:00- But there's no plaque to Ford. - I'm afraid not
0:12:00 > 0:12:04because he doesn't appear to be quite as well-known as Conrad.
0:12:04 > 0:12:07Certainly, Conrad was the first author that we heard about
0:12:07 > 0:12:10that lived here.
0:12:10 > 0:12:11Joseph Conrad was the Polish seaman
0:12:11 > 0:12:16who became one of the great figures of English fiction,
0:12:16 > 0:12:20author of The Secret Agent, The Heart of Darkness and Nostromo.
0:12:20 > 0:12:23He loved Conrad, obviously, admired him enormously.
0:12:23 > 0:12:25how did he come to meet Conrad?
0:12:25 > 0:12:27They met at the house of a mutual friend
0:12:27 > 0:12:31and they were there partly to be introduced to each other.
0:12:31 > 0:12:34Conrad wanted someone who was a native English speaker,
0:12:34 > 0:12:37who was a literary figure, as Ford was by then,
0:12:37 > 0:12:41to help him with his English and his writing.
0:12:41 > 0:12:45And the idea was that Ford might be able to help him.
0:12:45 > 0:12:48So how did they work together, how did they collaborate?
0:12:48 > 0:12:52They talked and talked and talked, they walked.
0:12:52 > 0:12:56They would do one page, one paragraph each, one chapter each.
0:12:56 > 0:12:59That sort of thing. They did it turn and turn about,
0:12:59 > 0:13:02by Ford's account anyway, and I expect that was how they did it
0:13:02 > 0:13:05rather than sitting in the same room and doing it.
0:13:05 > 0:13:07Their literary sensibility,
0:13:07 > 0:13:09their sense of being writers at a critical moment
0:13:09 > 0:13:13at the turn of the century, part of the modern movement,
0:13:13 > 0:13:16that was something they shared.
0:13:16 > 0:13:18They were, as you say, aware of themselves,
0:13:18 > 0:13:22or saw themselves as being part of a coming movement,
0:13:22 > 0:13:25making a break with the past.
0:13:25 > 0:13:27I think that was a very important part of the relationship,
0:13:27 > 0:13:29this intellectual identity.
0:13:29 > 0:13:31Conrad was 16 years Ford's senior
0:13:31 > 0:13:35and the literary marriage between these two great writers
0:13:35 > 0:13:36is one of the most unusual
0:13:36 > 0:13:39and intriguing collaborations of the age.
0:13:40 > 0:13:44Remarkably, during the years in which they worked side by side,
0:13:44 > 0:13:48the two men managed to write three novels together.
0:13:48 > 0:13:51What's more, its clear that Ford played a significant role
0:13:51 > 0:13:57on some of Conrad's greatest works, including his classic Nostromo.
0:13:57 > 0:14:00Close inspection of the manuscript of Nostromo
0:14:00 > 0:14:04reveals a number of paragraphs actually written in Ford's hand.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08But perhaps the greatest achievement of their collaboration
0:14:08 > 0:14:12grew from the hundreds of hours they spent, sitting, eating,
0:14:12 > 0:14:14drinking and talking together,
0:14:14 > 0:14:20arguing their own new theory of what the modern novel should be and do.
0:14:20 > 0:14:23They called this theory impressionism.
0:14:23 > 0:14:28"Impressionism exists to render those queer effects of real life
0:14:28 > 0:14:31"that are like so many views seen through bright glass -
0:14:31 > 0:14:35"through glass so bright that whilst you perceive through it a landscape
0:14:35 > 0:14:37"or a backyard, you are aware that on the surface,
0:14:37 > 0:14:40"it reflects a face of a person behind you.
0:14:40 > 0:14:43"For the whole of life is really like that.
0:14:43 > 0:14:46"We are almost always in one place
0:14:46 > 0:14:49"with our minds somewhere quite other."
0:14:53 > 0:14:57The collaboration with Conrad was intense and when Ford and Elsie,
0:14:57 > 0:14:59now with two small children,
0:14:59 > 0:15:02moved to her parents' village of Winchelsea,
0:15:02 > 0:15:03it was not long before Conrad
0:15:03 > 0:15:06was installed in a cottage just across the road.
0:15:06 > 0:15:10The to and fro between the houses may have helped their writing
0:15:10 > 0:15:14but it also created tensions.
0:15:16 > 0:15:20Conrad's wife Jessie took a strong dislike to Ford.
0:15:20 > 0:15:24Ford would drop in over the weekends and stay interminably long.
0:15:24 > 0:15:26In Jessie's words,
0:15:26 > 0:15:29"The longest I have ever known and a fit punishment
0:15:29 > 0:15:34"for any sins I might have committed or ever contemplated."
0:15:34 > 0:15:39Matters were not improved when the great Henry James came to tea
0:15:39 > 0:15:42and Ford managed to lock Jessie in the kitchen.
0:15:45 > 0:15:47And there were other problems.
0:15:47 > 0:15:49Over the three years he spent
0:15:49 > 0:15:52in the claustrophobic atmosphere of Winchelsea,
0:15:52 > 0:15:56Ford became increasingly sick and depressed.
0:15:58 > 0:16:01On top of this, his marriage to Elsie was under strain.
0:16:06 > 0:16:09But then there's this problem of did he have an affair
0:16:09 > 0:16:10with Elsie's sister, Mary?
0:16:10 > 0:16:12Was that going on there?
0:16:12 > 0:16:14There's some suspicion that there might have been.
0:16:14 > 0:16:18When you look at where the two houses are in Winchelsea,
0:16:18 > 0:16:22and Winchelsea is a real curtain-twitching place,
0:16:22 > 0:16:26you think, you could only do it by renting a hotel in Ashford.
0:16:26 > 0:16:30Could you manage an affair here and keep it secret?
0:16:30 > 0:16:34I don't know. I think it would have been pretty difficult.
0:16:34 > 0:16:38But I think Mary was quite a chancer and quite charming, and he was too.
0:16:43 > 0:16:47How much a relationship with Mary
0:16:47 > 0:16:52contributed to Ford's mental and physical breakdown in 1904
0:16:52 > 0:16:54we can't know, but illness led him
0:16:54 > 0:17:00to spend several months haunting the spas of Germany in search of a cure.
0:17:00 > 0:17:02It was a world he would return to some years later,
0:17:02 > 0:17:07and it would provide the setting for his novel of sexual deceit
0:17:07 > 0:17:10and betrayal, The Good Soldier.
0:17:14 > 0:17:19He came back to London towards the end of 1904
0:17:19 > 0:17:21and he tells this extraordinary story
0:17:21 > 0:17:24about the doctor that was called in, who was called Doctor Teb.
0:17:24 > 0:17:28Teb sort of looked at him and didn't say anything for a few minutes
0:17:28 > 0:17:33and then he says, "You'll be dead within the month."
0:17:33 > 0:17:36And he didn't prescribe anything, he just left.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40Ford then said he sort of got up, and was so angry with that,
0:17:40 > 0:17:43he sort of marched out and walked across Piccadilly Circus
0:17:43 > 0:17:46back and forth for an hour, you know, despite all the traffic.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49It was quite a dangerous thing to do,
0:17:49 > 0:17:51saying "I will not be dead in a month"
0:17:51 > 0:17:54and Ford thought that this had cured him.
0:17:54 > 0:17:58The jolt he got from the doctor was what brought him back?
0:17:58 > 0:18:01He did walk around a lot in London after that and that then turned
0:18:01 > 0:18:04into his book on London, The Soul of London,
0:18:04 > 0:18:06which was his first real success
0:18:06 > 0:18:09and that was the thing that really launched his literary career,
0:18:09 > 0:18:12made him feel that he could be a writer and a successful one.
0:18:15 > 0:18:20"England is a small island, but London is illimitable.
0:18:20 > 0:18:22"A brilliant windswept, sunny day,
0:18:22 > 0:18:26"with the fountains like haycocks of prismatic glitter
0:18:26 > 0:18:28"in the shadow of Nelson's column,
0:18:28 > 0:18:32"with the paving stones almost opalescent, with colour everywhere,
0:18:32 > 0:18:35"the vivid blue of the paper used by flower-sellers
0:18:35 > 0:18:40"to wrap poet's narcissi, the glint of straws blown from horse's feeds,
0:18:40 > 0:18:45"the shimmer of wheel marks on the wooden pavement.
0:18:45 > 0:18:48"Or is it the chaotic crowd,
0:18:48 > 0:18:51"like that of baggage wagons huddled together after a great defeat,
0:18:51 > 0:18:55"an apparently indissoluble muddle of grey wheel traffic,
0:18:55 > 0:18:59"of hooded carts, of buses drawing out of line,
0:18:59 > 0:19:03"of grimy upper windows through which appear white faces
0:19:03 > 0:19:05"seen from one's level on a bus top."
0:19:10 > 0:19:13Following the success of The Soul Of London,
0:19:13 > 0:19:16Ford's literary career began to grow in many directions.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19He produced an impressive trilogy of historical novels
0:19:19 > 0:19:22about Henry VIII's wife Catherine Howard
0:19:22 > 0:19:25and then in 1908, from his rooms on Holland Park,
0:19:25 > 0:19:29he embarked on his most ambitious adventure to date,
0:19:29 > 0:19:33a literary magazine called The English Review.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36The first edition included contributions
0:19:36 > 0:19:41from Conrad, Henry James, Galsworthy, a poem by Thomas Hardy,
0:19:41 > 0:19:44and even a short story by Tolstoy.
0:19:44 > 0:19:47How critical do you think The English Review was
0:19:47 > 0:19:50to the literature and the writers of the time?
0:19:50 > 0:19:52I think it was immensely important.
0:19:52 > 0:19:55He gathered together such an extraordinary group of writers
0:19:55 > 0:19:58for The English Review, and in a way, what defined it was the ability
0:19:58 > 0:20:03to mix the more established people with the avant-garde
0:20:03 > 0:20:07so some of the writing by people like Wyndham Lewis or DH Lawrence
0:20:07 > 0:20:09was very radical and clearly heralding
0:20:09 > 0:20:12the way modernism was going to develop.
0:20:12 > 0:20:15Ford plucked Lawrence from his job as a teacher in Croydon
0:20:15 > 0:20:18and introduced him to literary London.
0:20:18 > 0:20:22Lawrence recalled, "Ford asked to see The White Peacock
0:20:22 > 0:20:25"and read it immediately, and in his queer voice,
0:20:25 > 0:20:29"when we were sitting on an omnibus in London, he shouted in my ear,
0:20:29 > 0:20:32"It's got every fault that the English novel can have,
0:20:32 > 0:20:34"but you've got genius."
0:20:34 > 0:20:37"I always thought he had a bit of genius himself," Lawrence remarked.
0:20:37 > 0:20:39"He is the kindest man on Earth.
0:20:39 > 0:20:44"He keeps the doors of his soul open and you may walk in."
0:20:44 > 0:20:47Part of the difficulty of talking about Ford's influence,
0:20:47 > 0:20:50is that he was influential in so many different areas at the same time,
0:20:50 > 0:20:54you know, not just as a fiction writer but certainly as a critic,
0:20:54 > 0:20:57and also as a poet and very much as a critic of poetry.
0:20:57 > 0:21:00He had a really important friendship with Ezra Pound.
0:21:00 > 0:21:02We think of Ezra Pound
0:21:02 > 0:21:05as the most radical poet of the early 20th century,
0:21:05 > 0:21:08one of the true architects of modernism.
0:21:08 > 0:21:11But Pound was clear where his inspiration came from.
0:21:11 > 0:21:14Years later, he wrote of his friend,
0:21:14 > 0:21:18"The revolution of the word began in London in 1908
0:21:18 > 0:21:22"with the lone whimper of Ford Madox Ford."
0:21:23 > 0:21:27Ford's front door on Holland Park was always left open
0:21:27 > 0:21:29for the constant stream of writers
0:21:29 > 0:21:31who came proffering their manuscripts
0:21:31 > 0:21:36and who he entertained with breakfasts, lunches and suppers.
0:21:36 > 0:21:41Its fair to say that Ford was always enthusiastic about food
0:21:41 > 0:21:44and in later life wrote a number
0:21:44 > 0:21:48of entertaining, often nostalgic articles about meals and menus
0:21:48 > 0:21:51he'd enjoyed in Edwardian London.
0:21:51 > 0:21:55In one of the most extreme of these, a feature for the New York Herald,
0:21:55 > 0:22:01Ford invented an unlikely menu for diners observing a strict Lent diet.
0:22:01 > 0:22:06Chef Rowley Leigh, an admirer of both Ford's fiction and his food,
0:22:06 > 0:22:10is preparing Ford's supposedly austere menu.
0:22:10 > 0:22:12The beginning of this Lenten meal,
0:22:12 > 0:22:17which, Alan, you'd normally consider a very adequate lunch...
0:22:19 > 0:22:22- ..is an omelette.- This is simply the first course of a very long...
0:22:22 > 0:22:25Simply the first course.
0:22:27 > 0:22:32The main course on Ford's menu is a strange fish dish involving pike.
0:22:39 > 0:22:40Ah, my God.
0:22:42 > 0:22:44So this is...
0:22:44 > 0:22:47This is a boudin de brochet
0:22:47 > 0:22:51and it is a very fine pike forcemeat.
0:22:51 > 0:22:55It's worked with egg white and cream and then some more cream.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58- Of course. - And then a little bit of cream.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01It's an incredibly laborious process,
0:23:01 > 0:23:05but this is one of the great classics, quenelles de brochet.
0:23:05 > 0:23:09He did think, in some way, he was stinting himself.
0:23:09 > 0:23:13In those days, people ate huge amounts
0:23:13 > 0:23:17and he talks about suppers but these were the things he had after dinner.
0:23:17 > 0:23:20After dinner!
0:23:20 > 0:23:24And then just in case he thought he hadn't had enough egg,
0:23:24 > 0:23:29or sugar, or cream, he had oeufs a la neige.
0:23:29 > 0:23:33But they had no sense... Cream used to be considered good for you.
0:23:33 > 0:23:37Even in my childhood.
0:23:37 > 0:23:40- It's just goodness personified, isn't it?- it is.
0:23:40 > 0:23:41Eggs, sugar, cream.
0:23:41 > 0:23:45But there was also something about him, isn't there?
0:23:45 > 0:23:47I think he was extraordinarily likeable
0:23:47 > 0:23:51and I think there's also a sort of vulnerability about him.
0:23:58 > 0:24:02- Here's to Ford.- Ford Madox Ford, great Englishman.
0:24:07 > 0:24:10Even if he was half-German.
0:24:13 > 0:24:17With the constant feeding and entertaining of writers
0:24:17 > 0:24:21that went on in Holland Park, Ford needed somewhere to escape
0:24:21 > 0:24:23in order to actually edit his magazine.
0:24:23 > 0:24:27Where better than his local music hall?
0:24:27 > 0:24:30On Friday nights, Ford would discretely head off
0:24:30 > 0:24:33to the Shepherds Bush Empire,
0:24:33 > 0:24:36accompanied by a great pile of manuscripts.
0:24:36 > 0:24:39Apparently, during the performance, he mapped out his selections
0:24:39 > 0:24:42for the next edition, pausing occasionally
0:24:42 > 0:24:45when his favourite acts appeared onstage.
0:24:47 > 0:24:50But for all the amusing anecdotes about his editing style,
0:24:50 > 0:24:54at the helm of The English Review, thanks to his bravery and openness
0:24:54 > 0:24:57and his intuition about writing,
0:24:57 > 0:25:01Ford became the midwife of English literary modernism,
0:25:01 > 0:25:05bringing into the world some of the greatest writers in the language.
0:25:08 > 0:25:10Rather tragically, after only 12 months,
0:25:10 > 0:25:14thanks to hopeless financial management and political rowing,
0:25:14 > 0:25:18he was fired from his own magazine.
0:25:21 > 0:25:26It was around this time that Violet Hunt entered his life.
0:25:26 > 0:25:30Ford's relationship with Elsie had been unravelling
0:25:30 > 0:25:33since his breakdown in 1904.
0:25:33 > 0:25:36He was already living apart from her and his two daughters,
0:25:36 > 0:25:41when four years later, Violet made her entrance.
0:25:43 > 0:25:45Violet Hunt, nicknamed Immodest Violet,
0:25:45 > 0:25:48was a Kensington novelist and beauty,
0:25:48 > 0:25:50with a literary taste in lovers.
0:25:50 > 0:25:53She'd been proposed to by Oscar Wilde,
0:25:53 > 0:25:56had an affair with Somerset Maugham,
0:25:56 > 0:26:00been chased by both HG Wells and the lesbian Radclyffe Hall,
0:26:00 > 0:26:06and had herself even attempted to seduce the prim and proper Henry James.
0:26:10 > 0:26:13Violet's relationship with Ford began when her editor
0:26:13 > 0:26:17suggested she enlist his help with the promotion of her latest novel.
0:26:19 > 0:26:21Apparently, Violet leapt on him,
0:26:21 > 0:26:23here in Bedford Street in Covent Garden,
0:26:23 > 0:26:26in what was then the heartland of British publishing.
0:26:26 > 0:26:28She proceeded to proposition him.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32He really must write a piece about her for a newspaper,
0:26:32 > 0:26:33and Ford fell for it.
0:26:33 > 0:26:38He was, he said, "awfully amused at her brass."
0:26:38 > 0:26:41It was the initiation of a ten-year relationship
0:26:41 > 0:26:45that brought both deep mutual misery and the inspiration
0:26:45 > 0:26:50for the troubled relationships at the heart of his greatest fiction.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57After months of courtship, in June 1909,
0:26:57 > 0:26:59Ford and Violet became lovers.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02Already well aware of the gossip they were causing,
0:27:02 > 0:27:05they hoped they could marry as soon as possible.
0:27:09 > 0:27:12In September, they went on holiday to stay with friends in Normandy.
0:27:12 > 0:27:15It was the beginning of a sequence of events
0:27:15 > 0:27:19that would scar Ford's reputation in Britain for the rest of his life.
0:27:22 > 0:27:26As Ford and Violet returned from France to Charing Cross Station,
0:27:26 > 0:27:29Elsie was waiting to confront them.
0:27:33 > 0:27:38On spotting his wife, apparently, Ford muttered to Violet in dismay,
0:27:38 > 0:27:41"Its all up, old girl! You'll see."
0:27:41 > 0:27:43And he was absolutely right.
0:27:43 > 0:27:47Furious with Ford's deception, Elsie gave up divorce proceedings
0:27:47 > 0:27:53and instead sued for the restitution of her conjugal rights.
0:27:53 > 0:27:55The writ was reported in the newspapers
0:27:55 > 0:27:59and Ford and Hunt's affair was transformed from a rumour
0:27:59 > 0:28:01into a scandal.
0:28:02 > 0:28:08A scandal that only a few months later landed Ford in prison.
0:28:08 > 0:28:12When Elsie's case came to court, Ford was ordered to pay maintenance.
0:28:12 > 0:28:14He was already giving Elsie money
0:28:14 > 0:28:17and bitterly resented the implication
0:28:17 > 0:28:19that he was not supporting his family.
0:28:19 > 0:28:24Refusing to obey, in an act of pride and typically Fordian self-sabotage,
0:28:24 > 0:28:28he was sentenced to ten days in Brixton Prison.
0:28:28 > 0:28:32For once, Ford seems to have written absolutely nothing
0:28:32 > 0:28:35about this humiliating experience.
0:28:40 > 0:28:44In the summer of 1910, partly as an escape
0:28:44 > 0:28:47from the disapproval in the London air,
0:28:47 > 0:28:51Ford and Violet Hunt went on an extended visit to Germany.
0:28:51 > 0:28:54Travelling into the world of polite German society,
0:28:54 > 0:28:57in the company of a woman who was not his wife,
0:28:57 > 0:28:59lit the fire under what would become
0:28:59 > 0:29:05Ford's intense and astonishingly modern novel, The Good Soldier.
0:29:05 > 0:29:10The book is set in the German spa town of Bad Nauheim.
0:29:10 > 0:29:13Though not directly autobiographical, it draws deeply
0:29:13 > 0:29:18on Ford's turbulent emotional state during the months spent in Germany
0:29:18 > 0:29:23after his nervous breakdown and his difficult year here with Violet.
0:29:23 > 0:29:27The Good Soldier is Ford's masterpiece.
0:29:27 > 0:29:32It begins, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard."
0:29:32 > 0:29:36Short and shocking, it describes the adulterous and tragic affairs
0:29:36 > 0:29:39of an English officer, Captain Edward Ashburnham.
0:29:39 > 0:29:43It's set here in the hotels of Bad Nauheim.
0:29:43 > 0:29:49It's a book about memories, about remembering and deceit.
0:29:49 > 0:29:52There are certain books that you absolutely remember
0:29:52 > 0:29:53your first reading of,
0:29:53 > 0:29:56and The Good Soldier is that book for me.
0:29:56 > 0:29:59I remember sitting on the floor of this terrible flat
0:29:59 > 0:30:03and reading The Good Soldier sort of late into the night
0:30:03 > 0:30:05and non-stop, and it did change my life.
0:30:05 > 0:30:11And the reason it changed my life is because of the way its told
0:30:11 > 0:30:17and because it... reveals the depths of the human heart
0:30:17 > 0:30:20in a way that I think no other book does
0:30:20 > 0:30:22and because it is savagely truthful
0:30:22 > 0:30:25about what human beings are capable of.
0:30:25 > 0:30:28That was the thing that gripped me at the age of 18.
0:30:28 > 0:30:34I hadn't fully plumbed the wickedness of the human heart
0:30:34 > 0:30:36until I read The Good Soldier.
0:30:38 > 0:30:42There's four people, two couples,
0:30:42 > 0:30:47centring around Ashburnham who is the good soldier of the narration.
0:30:47 > 0:30:51It's... about their close relationship,
0:30:51 > 0:30:53everything seems very transparent.
0:30:53 > 0:30:56They're all good people, they're all very friendly
0:30:56 > 0:30:58and behave very well. Yet, underneath,
0:30:58 > 0:31:02this tremendous deception has been, as it were, lived out
0:31:02 > 0:31:06which the narrator discovers very slowly
0:31:06 > 0:31:11and very indirectly throughout the course of the years.
0:31:11 > 0:31:13And it's the bewilderment of his own discovery
0:31:13 > 0:31:16that he passes on to the reader.
0:31:16 > 0:31:20He wants you to be as puzzled and as bewildered as he is
0:31:20 > 0:31:24about the absolute contrast between how people appear to be
0:31:24 > 0:31:27and what they really are underneath.
0:31:27 > 0:31:29In fact, what they really are underneath,
0:31:29 > 0:31:32is that what they really are? It's this perpetual labyrinth
0:31:32 > 0:31:37and layering and unpeeling about what constitutes the human being.
0:31:37 > 0:31:39It's very devilish.
0:31:41 > 0:31:43"I would walk with Florence to the baths,
0:31:43 > 0:31:46"and of course she entertained me with her conversation.
0:31:46 > 0:31:50"It was wonderful what she could make conversation out of.
0:31:50 > 0:31:53"When she came to the door of the bathing place,
0:31:53 > 0:31:55"she would look at me with a little coquettish smile,
0:31:55 > 0:31:58"so that her cheek appeared to be caressing her shoulder.
0:31:59 > 0:32:02"Yes, that is how I most exactly remember her.
0:32:02 > 0:32:06"For whose benefit did she do it?
0:32:06 > 0:32:10"For that of the bath attendant? And the passers-by?
0:32:10 > 0:32:15"I don't know. Anyhow, it can't have been for me."
0:32:20 > 0:32:24The two couples take a day trip to nearby Marburg Castle
0:32:24 > 0:32:29where the deception at the heart of the book becomes painfully apparent,
0:32:29 > 0:32:34but even nine years after the event,
0:32:34 > 0:32:39the narrator still struggles to comprehend this monumental betrayal.
0:32:39 > 0:32:44As she explains the historical documents on display,
0:32:44 > 0:32:47Florence, the narrator's wife,
0:32:47 > 0:32:52"laid one finger upon Captain Ashburnham's wrist."
0:32:54 > 0:32:56He gives you a fragment,
0:32:56 > 0:32:59like the touching of the wrist, for example, that takes place.
0:32:59 > 0:33:04He manipulates your perception of what appears
0:33:04 > 0:33:10to be an absolutely devastating giveaway of a relationship.
0:33:10 > 0:33:13He manipulates you back into seeing it as completely innocent.
0:33:14 > 0:33:18When Ashburnham's wife, Leonora, sees Florence touch her husband,
0:33:18 > 0:33:21she grabs the narrator and drags him out.
0:33:23 > 0:33:26"I was aware of something treacherous, something frightful,
0:33:26 > 0:33:28"something evil in the day.
0:33:28 > 0:33:31"I can't define it and can't find a simile for it,
0:33:31 > 0:33:33"and it was a panic in which we fled!
0:33:33 > 0:33:36"We went right down the winding stairs,
0:33:36 > 0:33:40"across the immense Rittersaal to a little terrace that overlooks the Lahn.
0:33:40 > 0:33:44"Don't you see?" she said. "Don't you see what's going on?"
0:33:44 > 0:33:48"No, what's the matter? Whatever's the matter?"
0:33:52 > 0:33:55Ford makes it seem as if, at the time of writing,
0:33:55 > 0:34:00the narrator had absolutely no idea that his wife was having an affair,
0:34:00 > 0:34:05and this conceit, that the writer doesn't fully understand his own story,
0:34:05 > 0:34:06continues throughout the book.
0:34:09 > 0:34:15It's about, fundamentally, the savagery and instinct to kill
0:34:15 > 0:34:19and ruthless brutality that there is in all of us.
0:34:28 > 0:34:32Ford wrote The Good Soldier on the eve of the First World War
0:34:32 > 0:34:35and every significant event in the novel
0:34:35 > 0:34:39repeatedly shares the same date, the 4th of August,
0:34:39 > 0:34:43the date on which the war began.
0:34:43 > 0:34:46The collapse of the novel's spa society
0:34:46 > 0:34:52mirrors the breakdown of European civilisation in 1914.
0:34:52 > 0:34:55But its not just public events that echo through the book.
0:34:55 > 0:34:59By the time The Good Soldier was published in 1915,
0:34:59 > 0:35:03Ford's relationship with Violet Hunt was also falling apart
0:35:03 > 0:35:07and three months after the novel came out,
0:35:07 > 0:35:10Ford unexpectedly decided to become a soldier himself.
0:35:10 > 0:35:14Violet knew their relationship was over.
0:35:15 > 0:35:20Ford was assigned to the 3rd Battalion of the Welsh Regiment
0:35:20 > 0:35:23and undertook his training at Cardiff castle.
0:35:23 > 0:35:28The war did represent, I think, an escape route
0:35:28 > 0:35:33really, from this weird and difficult set of relationships
0:35:33 > 0:35:36he found himself in. For him, he thought,
0:35:36 > 0:35:40"This is the most important thing, in the world,
0:35:40 > 0:35:46"that's happened in my lifetime. I can't be on the edges of this.
0:35:46 > 0:35:50"As a writer, as somebody who wants to make sense
0:35:50 > 0:35:56"of experience in general, this is far, far too important to ignore."
0:35:58 > 0:36:02On 13th July, 1916, after a nerve-wracking wait,
0:36:02 > 0:36:06Ford and his unit left Cardiff for France.
0:36:06 > 0:36:09Ford was anxious to get up onto the frontline,
0:36:09 > 0:36:12partly to get a writer's view of the war
0:36:12 > 0:36:14and partly out of a desire to do his duty.
0:36:14 > 0:36:18However, because of his age, he was now 42 years old,
0:36:18 > 0:36:22his commanding officer posted him with battalion transport
0:36:22 > 0:36:25just behind the line, down there at Becourt Wood.
0:36:25 > 0:36:29He might not have been on the first line of attack but he was still
0:36:29 > 0:36:34well within range of the relentless barrage of the German guns.
0:36:34 > 0:36:38It was an experience that gave him more than enough literary fuel.
0:36:40 > 0:36:43"I remember standing at an observation post
0:36:43 > 0:36:46"during the July push on the Somme, on the highest point
0:36:46 > 0:36:49"of the road between Albert and Becourt Wood.
0:36:49 > 0:36:54"In the territory beneath the eye or hidden by the folds in the ground,
0:36:54 > 0:36:57"there must have been, on the two sides, a million men,
0:36:57 > 0:37:02"moving one against the other and impelled by an invisible moral force
0:37:02 > 0:37:04"into a Hell of fear
0:37:04 > 0:37:07"that surely cannot have had a parallel in this world."
0:37:13 > 0:37:16His reaction to the military is quite interesting.
0:37:16 > 0:37:20He says in an early letter back
0:37:20 > 0:37:23how much easier this is than being a writer.
0:37:23 > 0:37:25This is a letter from the Somme.
0:37:26 > 0:37:31Basically, in the army, all you had to do is do what you're told.
0:37:31 > 0:37:33Life is relatively straightforward.
0:37:33 > 0:37:35But of course he is observing it all the time,
0:37:35 > 0:37:37as his letters to Conrad at that time show.
0:37:37 > 0:37:39He's writing deliberately saying,
0:37:39 > 0:37:42"This is stuff you might be able to use.
0:37:42 > 0:37:45"It's interesting the difference in sounds between shellfire
0:37:45 > 0:37:47"according to the kinds of countryside you're in,"
0:37:47 > 0:37:49and then he details the differences.
0:37:49 > 0:37:53"In woody country, heavy artillery makes most noise,
0:37:53 > 0:37:54"because of the echoes.
0:37:57 > 0:38:01"On marshland, the sound seems alarmingly close.
0:38:04 > 0:38:07"On dry downland, the sound is much sharper,
0:38:07 > 0:38:13"it hits you and shakes you."
0:38:20 > 0:38:25Only two weeks after he arrived in the Somme, Ford was blown up.
0:38:44 > 0:38:49Ford's wounds were superficial but the impact was enormous.
0:38:49 > 0:38:53The reverberations of the explosion at Becourt Wood went on to shape
0:38:53 > 0:38:59Ford's life and his literature for the next decade and beyond.
0:39:04 > 0:39:07""After I was blown up at Becourt-Becordel in 1916,
0:39:07 > 0:39:09"and having lost my memory,
0:39:09 > 0:39:13"I lay in the Casualty Clearing Station in Corbie."
0:39:14 > 0:39:18"I used to worry agonisedly about what my name could be."
0:39:26 > 0:39:29For Ford the writer, the explosion at Becourt
0:39:29 > 0:39:32and the horrors of his hospitalisation here
0:39:32 > 0:39:37in the sheds and tents at Corbie were a powerful creative catalyst.
0:39:37 > 0:39:40Back in hospital a few months later he wrote,
0:39:40 > 0:39:45"I am in short rather ill still and sometimes doubt my own sanity.
0:39:45 > 0:39:48"Indeed quite frequently, I do,
0:39:48 > 0:39:53"and that is pretty well the condition of a number of men here.
0:39:53 > 0:39:56"I wonder what the effect of it will be on us all, after the war."
0:40:00 > 0:40:02Four years as a soldier
0:40:02 > 0:40:05had a profound and wearying effect on Ford.
0:40:05 > 0:40:09By the time the war ended he was in poor health and felt forgotten
0:40:09 > 0:40:11and washed up as a writer.
0:40:11 > 0:40:14However, once again he had fallen in love,
0:40:14 > 0:40:18this time with a young Australian painter, Stella Bowen,
0:40:18 > 0:40:23and after two years living together hidden away in the country,
0:40:23 > 0:40:26Stella gave birth to a baby girl.
0:40:30 > 0:40:36In 1922, Ford and Stella decided to leave England for a break in France.
0:40:36 > 0:40:40He didn't realise it at the time, but for Ford,
0:40:40 > 0:40:43this would prove to be the last of England.
0:40:43 > 0:40:49His grandfather's famous painting of exile seemed strangely prophetic.
0:40:49 > 0:40:53Ford would never live in England again.
0:41:04 > 0:41:05Towards the end of 1922,
0:41:05 > 0:41:09Ford and Stella with their infant daughter Julie
0:41:09 > 0:41:13took up the offer of a villa here in the south of France at Cap Ferrat.
0:41:13 > 0:41:18The winter sun was to prove a powerful and immediate catalyst.
0:41:18 > 0:41:20For two or three days, Ford paced the grounds
0:41:20 > 0:41:24of an idyllic garden overlooking the Mediterranean
0:41:24 > 0:41:27as the structure and the philosophy of a new novel
0:41:27 > 0:41:29began to take shape in his mind.
0:41:31 > 0:41:33"I will here make a confession.
0:41:33 > 0:41:36"I have always had the greatest contempt for novels
0:41:36 > 0:41:38"written with a purpose.
0:41:38 > 0:41:41"Fictions should render, not draw morals.
0:41:41 > 0:41:43"But when I sat down to write that series of volumes,
0:41:43 > 0:41:45"I sinned against my gods to the extent of saying
0:41:45 > 0:41:50"that I was going to write a work that should have for its purpose
0:41:50 > 0:41:52"the obviating of all future wars."
0:41:58 > 0:42:03"Intense dejection, endless muddles, endless follies, endless villainies.
0:42:03 > 0:42:05"All these men given into the hands
0:42:05 > 0:42:09"of the most cynically care-free intriguers in long corridors
0:42:09 > 0:42:13"who made plots that harrowed the hearts of the world.
0:42:13 > 0:42:16"All these men toys, all these agonies mere occasions
0:42:16 > 0:42:19"for picturesque phrases to be put into politician's speeches
0:42:19 > 0:42:22"without heart or even intelligence.
0:42:22 > 0:42:25"Hundreds and thousands of men tossed here and there
0:42:25 > 0:42:29"in that sordid and gigantic mud-brownness of mid-winter."
0:42:34 > 0:42:39After six years in which he had struggled to put words on paper,
0:42:39 > 0:42:44Ford suddenly found himself writing with new purpose and energy.
0:42:47 > 0:42:50As their summer in Provence drew to a close,
0:42:50 > 0:42:56Ford and Stella decided to head back not to England, but Paris.
0:43:00 > 0:43:05This cafe, Les Deux Magots, in the heart of Paris's left bank,
0:43:05 > 0:43:09was one of the most popular drinking holes for artists and writers
0:43:09 > 0:43:12and Ford made himself thoroughly at home here.
0:43:12 > 0:43:16There's an extraordinary roll call of artists with whom Ford shared
0:43:16 > 0:43:19a glass of Pernod during his Paris years,
0:43:19 > 0:43:22including James Joyce who had only recently completed Ulysses,
0:43:22 > 0:43:24and his old friend Ezra Pound.
0:43:26 > 0:43:29A young American journalist called Ernest Hemmingway
0:43:29 > 0:43:34and the Queen of the Parisian avant-garde, Gertrude Stein.
0:43:34 > 0:43:38It was a cultural cocktail that fuelled Ford's creativity.
0:43:38 > 0:43:41It not only provided the kind of background noise
0:43:41 > 0:43:44he needed to write the four ambitious novels of Parade's End,
0:43:44 > 0:43:48but it soon inspired a new project.
0:43:48 > 0:43:50A brilliant and eclectic literary magazine
0:43:50 > 0:43:54entitled The Transatlantic Review.
0:43:54 > 0:43:58"The transatlantic review arose almost accidentally.
0:43:58 > 0:44:01"A dozen times I was stopped on the boulevards
0:44:01 > 0:44:05"and told that what was needed was another English Review.
0:44:05 > 0:44:07"Then one day, crossing the Blvd St Michel,
0:44:07 > 0:44:11"up near the Luxembourg Gardens, I met my brother.
0:44:11 > 0:44:13"He said he wanted me to edit a review
0:44:13 > 0:44:15"owned by friends of his in Paris!
0:44:15 > 0:44:18"The startling nature of that coincidence
0:44:18 > 0:44:22"with the actual train of my thoughts made me accept the idea
0:44:22 > 0:44:25"even whilst we stood in the middle of the street."
0:44:29 > 0:44:32What was distinctive, do you think, about HIS Transatlantic Review?
0:44:32 > 0:44:36I think he put a lot of energy into it,
0:44:36 > 0:44:41because he...gave a lot of stock to new writers,
0:44:41 > 0:44:44young writers trying hard to write,
0:44:44 > 0:44:52and he actually dubbed the Transatlantic Review "the enterprise for discovery of the youth".
0:44:52 > 0:44:55There was a nightclub, I think, that he ran, didn't he?
0:44:55 > 0:44:59Yeah, the Bal du Printemps was a high place of Ford's,
0:44:59 > 0:45:01and Stella, obviously.
0:45:01 > 0:45:03They held...
0:45:03 > 0:45:05I think it was on Thursdays they had balls there
0:45:05 > 0:45:08and they had people dancing and drinking,
0:45:08 > 0:45:11and Ford was apparently not so much of a good dancer
0:45:11 > 0:45:13as you would expect him to be,
0:45:13 > 0:45:17because he was a bit heavy and he had problems breathing,
0:45:17 > 0:45:19but he loved dancing.
0:45:24 > 0:45:27In his last edition of The Transatlantic Review,
0:45:27 > 0:45:31Ford printed an extract from a novel by an ex-chorus girl.
0:45:31 > 0:45:35Her name was Ella Lenglet and she was married to a Dutchman
0:45:35 > 0:45:37recently imprisoned for embezzlement.
0:45:37 > 0:45:40On publishing the fragment,
0:45:40 > 0:45:44Ford decided to change her name to Jean Rhys.
0:45:44 > 0:45:47Stella Bowen later recalled...
0:45:47 > 0:45:49The girl was a really tragic person.
0:45:49 > 0:45:52She had written an unpublishably sordid novel
0:45:52 > 0:45:55of great sensitiveness and persuasiveness.
0:45:58 > 0:46:02Ford gave her invaluable help with her writing,
0:46:02 > 0:46:04and I tried to help her with her clothes.
0:46:04 > 0:46:07I was singularly slow in discovering that she and Ford were in love.
0:46:14 > 0:46:18Ford's affair with Rhys is one of the most well-documented
0:46:18 > 0:46:22and vitriolic love affairs in literary history.
0:46:22 > 0:46:26All four parties - Jean, her Dutch husband, Ford and Stella -
0:46:26 > 0:46:29all wrote about the relationship.
0:46:29 > 0:46:34Rhys's poisonous caricature of Ford in her intense novel Quartet
0:46:34 > 0:46:40both condemns and redeems Ford in the lurid extremity of its rage.
0:46:42 > 0:46:46As he dressed she would lie with one arm over her eyes and think,
0:46:46 > 0:46:50"A bedroom in hell might look rather like this one."
0:46:50 > 0:46:52Her lips were dry.
0:46:52 > 0:46:54Her body ached. He was so heavy.
0:46:55 > 0:46:57He crushed her.
0:46:57 > 0:46:59He bore her down.
0:47:00 > 0:47:03The dim room smelt of stale scent.
0:47:03 > 0:47:06She began to imagine all the women who had lain
0:47:06 > 0:47:10where she was lying, laughing, or crying if they were drunk enough.
0:47:12 > 0:47:15He always hurried the end of his dressing,
0:47:15 > 0:47:18as if getting out of the room would be an escape.
0:47:21 > 0:47:25Jean Rhys's portrait of Ford in Quartet undoubtedly
0:47:25 > 0:47:29tarnished his reputation, but in reality it was Ford who helped her
0:47:29 > 0:47:34get started as a writer, and in later life she admitted as much.
0:47:34 > 0:47:37When it came to writing he was a very generous man
0:47:37 > 0:47:39and he encouraged me a great deal.
0:47:39 > 0:47:43I really don't think he tried to impose his ideas on me or anyone else
0:47:43 > 0:47:47but his casual hints could be extremely helpful.
0:47:47 > 0:47:51- Do you happen to have a cigarette? - Yes, of course.
0:47:51 > 0:47:56Ford's great war epic, Parade's End, took six years to write
0:47:56 > 0:48:00and his affair with Jean Rhys occurred in the middle of that endeavour.
0:48:00 > 0:48:04Although the books are set during the Great War,
0:48:04 > 0:48:06at heart this is a compelling love story.
0:48:08 > 0:48:13Parade's End is a fiercely original and experimental work,
0:48:13 > 0:48:16with a strongly cinematic quality,
0:48:16 > 0:48:20and it's now been brought to the screen by the director Susanna White
0:48:20 > 0:48:24and the writer Tom Stoppard, a passionate advocate of the book.
0:48:24 > 0:48:28If one looks at it as essentially a love story,
0:48:28 > 0:48:31it's the story of a man between two women.
0:48:31 > 0:48:35One of them he met at the wrong moment,
0:48:35 > 0:48:36the other one he meets too late.
0:48:36 > 0:48:44His sense of honour prevents him from acting dishonourably,
0:48:44 > 0:48:48until the world becomes dishonourable.
0:48:48 > 0:48:52- Christopher! There you are, at last!- Yes, sorry.
0:48:55 > 0:48:59- You look lovely. - You look like thunder.
0:49:01 > 0:49:08Sylvia Tietjens is one of the great characters in modern fiction,
0:49:08 > 0:49:15erm, and Christopher is one of the most puzzling in a certain way.
0:49:15 > 0:49:22We can't begin to decide whether he's sympathetic or unsympathetic,
0:49:22 > 0:49:24stubborn or charming and so on.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33On the one hand it's a vividly truthful novel about the war
0:49:33 > 0:49:37but it's also about sex, about sexual politics,
0:49:37 > 0:49:38about social change.
0:49:39 > 0:49:41Actually...
0:49:41 > 0:49:45you've reminded me that we've actually omitted to say something
0:49:45 > 0:49:49very important about Parade's End, which is that it's a comedy.
0:49:49 > 0:49:54It is sometimes grotesque, sometimes very dark,
0:49:54 > 0:49:58but it's a comic masterpiece,
0:49:58 > 0:50:04it's a comedic look at that part of the world at that time.
0:50:04 > 0:50:07- Well, that's the thing, Potty. - What thing?
0:50:08 > 0:50:10SHE SIGHS
0:50:10 > 0:50:12It's not for ever.
0:50:14 > 0:50:15Yes, it is.
0:50:15 > 0:50:19- I hope you're not going to behave badly.- About what?
0:50:20 > 0:50:26- About my going back, before it's too late.- Oh, no, you're not!
0:50:26 > 0:50:31- What are you talking about? - I miss my husband.- No, you don't!
0:50:31 > 0:50:35- You called him a...a...great lump of wood!- Oh, he is.
0:50:35 > 0:50:38I often want to kill him just to see if there's any blood in him.
0:50:38 > 0:50:40I'm permanently angry with him.
0:50:42 > 0:50:45But he's spoiled me for any other decently groomed man in London.
0:50:45 > 0:50:47He knows everything about everything.
0:50:47 > 0:50:51It's the difference between being with a grown man and...
0:50:51 > 0:50:53and trying to entertain a schoolboy.
0:50:56 > 0:51:00- Why can't one get a man to go away with one and be just... - SHE SIGHS
0:51:00 > 0:51:02..light comedy?
0:51:02 > 0:51:06I say, you're not going to kill yourself, I hope, Potty.
0:51:11 > 0:51:14I want you to swear on your St Anthony that you won't leave me.
0:51:15 > 0:51:16I'll do no such thing.
0:51:16 > 0:51:18Then, I'll kill you if you try.
0:51:20 > 0:51:22The French understand these things.
0:51:22 > 0:51:27In these hotels one's been staying in the notepaper is simply shaming.
0:51:28 > 0:51:31Sylvia is extraordinary, isn't she?
0:51:31 > 0:51:35I mean, she's dangerous and manipulative but then she's also unexpectedly vulnerable.
0:51:35 > 0:51:39One of the difficulties and one of the great things
0:51:39 > 0:51:43about trying to write and, I daresay, play these characters
0:51:43 > 0:51:50is that there's always a degree of apparent self-contradiction and internal contradiction.
0:51:52 > 0:51:56It's probably why the book has appealed so deeply.
0:51:56 > 0:52:03It does have the complexity of the people that you know in real life,
0:52:03 > 0:52:04people you know well.
0:52:06 > 0:52:09Is Mrs Duchemin really your mistress?
0:52:09 > 0:52:12Or only Macmaster's?
0:52:12 > 0:52:13Or both?
0:52:14 > 0:52:17She's been Mrs Macmaster for six months.
0:52:17 > 0:52:19There's a party tonight to announce it.
0:52:21 > 0:52:25And what about that girl you were potty about at that horrible tea party?
0:52:28 > 0:52:31- Has she had a war baby by you? - SHE LAUGHS LIGHTLY
0:52:31 > 0:52:34Everyone says she's your mistress too.
0:52:34 > 0:52:38No, Miss Wannop is not my mistress.
0:52:42 > 0:52:44It upset Brownlie so much,
0:52:44 > 0:52:47he's going to refuse your cheques just to please me!
0:52:49 > 0:52:50Oh.
0:52:52 > 0:52:55Do bankers do that just to please their women friends?
0:52:57 > 0:53:01HOT JAZZ PLAYS
0:53:13 > 0:53:15In the autumn of 1926,
0:53:15 > 0:53:19a couple of months after the affair with Jean Rhys had ended,
0:53:19 > 0:53:22Ford sailed, without Stella, here to New York
0:53:22 > 0:53:26for a speaking tour to promote the third of his Parade's End novels.
0:53:27 > 0:53:30Ford was excited at the prospect of America.
0:53:30 > 0:53:33On board he socialised with movie stars
0:53:33 > 0:53:36and was thrilled to see reporters waiting on the dock.
0:53:36 > 0:53:40He was sure they were waiting for him - well, perhaps -
0:53:40 > 0:53:45but his arrival in the city was noted by several of the New York dailies.
0:53:45 > 0:53:48The second volume of Parade's End
0:53:48 > 0:53:51had sold almost ten times better here than in England
0:53:51 > 0:53:56so Ford was in his element and more than ready to celebrate.
0:53:57 > 0:54:01Everywhere he went Ford was welcomed by large, enthusiastic audiences,
0:54:01 > 0:54:06including 800 society ladies over there at the Plaza Hotel.
0:54:06 > 0:54:10He wrote articles, was toasted at literary lunches,
0:54:10 > 0:54:12and of course met everyone who was anyone.
0:54:12 > 0:54:15He enjoyed the adulation unashamedly
0:54:15 > 0:54:20and reciprocated by falling head over heels in love with the city.
0:54:21 > 0:54:24Standing in front of the buildings of Fifth Avenue,
0:54:24 > 0:54:28he felt this was a place where you could think faster, feel faster
0:54:28 > 0:54:30and see further.
0:54:35 > 0:54:38America was a shot in the arm for him,
0:54:38 > 0:54:40in the sense that the book sold,
0:54:40 > 0:54:47and he also found New York incredibly exciting and energising.
0:54:47 > 0:54:51- The noise, the cars, the... - The vertical living.
0:54:51 > 0:54:55He's interested in angles, he's interested in perspective.
0:54:55 > 0:54:58Being asked to look up, being asked to look down.
0:54:58 > 0:55:01And also grid living. I mean, that's the other thing, the way
0:55:01 > 0:55:04in which you can stand on a corner and see these incredible distances.
0:55:04 > 0:55:07His acceptance in America sort of almost turned him,
0:55:07 > 0:55:10for many people, into an American, didn't it?
0:55:10 > 0:55:14Yes, it did. It turned him into an American novelist.
0:55:14 > 0:55:19Hemingway said that he became one of the two generally admired
0:55:19 > 0:55:23American novelists at that point, or, sorry, novelists in America.
0:55:23 > 0:55:26Which is interesting, because it does sort of move him
0:55:26 > 0:55:29across the Atlantic into that environment.
0:55:31 > 0:55:35It wasn't just America that Ford fell in love with.
0:55:35 > 0:55:37After several brief affairs,
0:55:37 > 0:55:42in 1930 he met a young American painter called Janice Biala.
0:55:45 > 0:55:49"I do believe that for every man there comes at last a woman...
0:55:49 > 0:55:52"No, that's the wrong way of formulating it.
0:55:52 > 0:55:59"For every man there comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her seal upon his imagination
0:55:59 > 0:56:00"has set her seal for good.
0:56:00 > 0:56:03"He will travel over no more horizons,
0:56:03 > 0:56:07"he will never again set the knapsack over his shoulders,
0:56:07 > 0:56:10"he will retire from those scenes.
0:56:10 > 0:56:14"He will have gone out of the business."
0:56:16 > 0:56:20Ford and Janice remained together for the rest of Ford's life,
0:56:20 > 0:56:26dividing their itinerant lifestyle between America, Paris and Provence.
0:56:29 > 0:56:30Until they ran out of money,
0:56:30 > 0:56:33Ford and Janice spent their summers
0:56:33 > 0:56:35in a rented apartment in a villa in Toulon -
0:56:35 > 0:56:40and it was here that Ford wrote a book called Provence,
0:56:40 > 0:56:43illustrated with some of Janice's sketches.
0:56:43 > 0:56:46The book is a wonderful concoction
0:56:46 > 0:56:49of history, romantic anecdotes and recipes,
0:56:49 > 0:56:52and it concludes in Ford's favourite place in the world,
0:56:52 > 0:56:58the obscure Provencal town of Tarascon.
0:57:03 > 0:57:07Tarascon was a sacred place for him ever since childhood,
0:57:07 > 0:57:11when he saw his grandfather, Ford Madox Brown,
0:57:11 > 0:57:14painting the medieval king and his bride
0:57:14 > 0:57:17who built the town's fairytale castle.
0:57:20 > 0:57:23This final scene of the book is written with
0:57:23 > 0:57:28a flourish of typically Fordian self-mockery and good humour.
0:57:29 > 0:57:32Flushed with cash for the first time in his life
0:57:32 > 0:57:35thanks to a windfall from sales of Parade's End,
0:57:35 > 0:57:39Ford and Janice took the first train to his beloved Tarascon.
0:57:39 > 0:57:42A thundering mistral wind is blowing through the town,
0:57:42 > 0:57:46but, undeterred, they head out to visit the castle,
0:57:46 > 0:57:50Janice carrying a wallet stuffed with Ford's earnings.
0:57:52 > 0:57:56Leaning back on the wind as if on an upended couch
0:57:56 > 0:57:58I roared with laughter.
0:58:00 > 0:58:02We were just under the great wall
0:58:02 > 0:58:06that keeps out the intolerably swift Rhone.
0:58:06 > 0:58:09Our treasurer - Janice Biala, keeper of the wallet -
0:58:09 > 0:58:13her cap was flying in the air, over into the Rhone.
0:58:14 > 0:58:20What glorious fun. The mistral sure is the wine of life.
0:58:23 > 0:58:26Our treasurer's wallet was flying from under an armpit
0:58:26 > 0:58:29beyond reach of a clutching hand.
0:58:31 > 0:58:33More money than Ford had seen in a lifetime
0:58:33 > 0:58:38had fallen out of Janice's wallet and into the depths of the Rhone.
0:58:39 > 0:58:41Poor old Ford.
0:58:42 > 0:58:47I hadn't been going to do any writing for a year. For two.
0:58:48 > 0:58:52But perhaps the remorseless Destiny of Provence
0:58:52 > 0:58:55desires thus to afflict the world with my books.
0:59:00 > 0:59:04In the spring of 1939, after years of ill health,
0:59:04 > 0:59:09Ford developed kidney problems while travelling back from America.
0:59:16 > 0:59:20When he and Janice arrived in France they went to stay in this hotel,
0:59:20 > 0:59:25the Cheval Blanc, in the picturesque coastal town of Honfleur.
0:59:25 > 0:59:29Ford insisted on having a decent view right to the end.
0:59:30 > 0:59:34He died on 26th June 1939
0:59:34 > 0:59:38and was buried in the town cemetery at Deauville.
0:59:38 > 0:59:40There were only three people at his funeral.
0:59:40 > 0:59:43In a typically Fordian curse of fate,
0:59:43 > 0:59:46the drunken sexton managed to bury him in the wrong spot
0:59:46 > 0:59:50and after the war his coffin had to be reburied.
0:59:54 > 0:59:59By the time of his death, in England, Ford was largely forgotten.
0:59:59 > 1:00:03He'd lived in exile and scandal had obscured his reputation.
1:00:04 > 1:00:09But over here in America he continued to be read and respected.
1:00:09 > 1:00:13What's more, an elite and ardent band of Ford admirers
1:00:13 > 1:00:15kept his flame alight.
1:00:15 > 1:00:21It was Graham Greene who wrote, "There is no novelist of this century
1:00:21 > 1:00:24"more likely to live than Ford Madox Ford."
1:00:26 > 1:00:30He died in France in relative obscurity.
1:00:30 > 1:00:32He loved America and they loved him.
1:00:32 > 1:00:36And yet I think of him as such an English...artist,
1:00:36 > 1:00:38such an English writer.
1:00:38 > 1:00:42And I know that he was hugely influenced by French writing
1:00:42 > 1:00:43and loved to be called...
1:00:43 > 1:00:46you know, loved to be described as more French than the French
1:00:46 > 1:00:50and loved to claim kinship with Flaubert and Maupassant and Daudet.
1:00:50 > 1:00:53But the nostalgia,
1:00:53 > 1:00:58the...the sentiment,
1:00:58 > 1:01:03the romanticism, erm, the feeling for the past,
1:01:03 > 1:01:05the anxiety, the trouble.
1:01:05 > 1:01:09all that seems to me deeply, deeply English.
1:01:11 > 1:01:14I can't help thinking he was born in the wrong era.
1:01:14 > 1:01:19Perhaps the humorous, opinionated, overweight,
1:01:19 > 1:01:23passionate and absurdly named Ford Madox Ford
1:01:23 > 1:01:26would fit in better today than he did 100 years ago.
1:01:26 > 1:01:28And if he was still around,
1:01:28 > 1:01:31I can't imagine many people I'd rather have lunch with.
1:01:48 > 1:01:52Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd