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Who on Earth Was Ford Madox Ford? A Culture Show Special

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Here in northern France

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in the middle of the Battle of the Somme,

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in a place the British soldiers called Sausage Valley,

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on account of the German barrage balloons that lurked in the sky,

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An overweight, middle-aged novelist

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with the unlikely name of Ford Madox Ford

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was caught in an artillery explosion and blown in the air.

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The worst of his physical injuries

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were to his expensive porcelain dentures,

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but suffering from shell shock,

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he couldn't even remember his own name.

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'It was a mental darkness.

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'You could not think.

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'A Dark Age!

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'The earth turned like a weary hippopotamus.

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'It was slow, slow, slow

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'like a slowed down movie.

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'The earth manoeuvred for an infinite time.'

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That explosion in Sausage Valley proved the trigger

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for one of the great novels of the First World War.

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And its now been adapted for television

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by Tom Stoppard.

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Ford was still recovering from the blast six years later

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when he began to write Parade's End.

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It's both a love story and one of the greatest accounts of the war

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and how it shattered the foundations of the old world.

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I'm Sylvia. Satterthwaite.

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Yes.

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My name is...

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My name is...

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Parade's End is a profoundly experimental

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and deeply personal novel

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written by one of the most extraordinary

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yet forgotten figures in British literature.

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But who on earth was Ford Madox Ford?

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I think he's been waiting

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to be rediscovered on a big scale for a long time now.

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Ford has been forgotten largely through his own fault.

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He was a self-saboteur. He stumbled through a whole sequence

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of damaging scandals in his personal life

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and yet he turns out to be

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one of the most appealing characters in literature.

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Ford Madox Ford didn't take himself terribly seriously.

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That self-deprecation was one of his greatest charms.

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He enjoyed a surprisingly rich and complicated love life.

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If he walked in you wouldn't think "Gosh, what a glamorous creature",

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but he was irresistible to women

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because he fell in love with them immediately.

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And this huge emotion would pour out.

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And also he seemed to be in deep trouble.

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There was a sense of sadness and melancholy.

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Yet despite this vulnerability,

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Ford was immensely sociable and unbelievably well-connected.

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He seems to have known, and often worked, with every writer

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and many of the artists of his era.

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Ford was one of the outstanding voices

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in the invention of modern fiction.

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This is a man who wrote over 18 novels

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and 400 essays

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and endless books of memoirs.

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He wrote as he breathed.

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On either side of the Great War,

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Ford produced two masterpieces,

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the most famous of which is The Good Soldier.

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The Good Soldier is quite widely recognised as a masterpiece

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and Parade's End isn't and wasn't.

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Dare I say that I think Parade's End is a greater work?

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You do? Why would you say that?

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Its just richer, the canvas is broad.

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And, of course, it's an incredibly ambitious work, isn't it?

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It's really four novels in one.

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Parade's End is a demonstration of the art of the novel.

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Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer

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was born in London in 1873 and brought up in leafy Brook Green

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It wasn't until his mid-40s

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that he disposed of his German father's surname

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and became Ford Madox Ford.

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His mother was the daughter of the great pre-Raphaelite painter,

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Ford Madox Brown.

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Brown was a doting grandfather,

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who liked to use his grandchildren as models.

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He painted the young Ford, aged four,

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in his Fitzroy Square studio in the guise of William Tell's son.

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That direct gaze, that look of trust in the young Ford's eyes

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says a lot about their relationship.

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Ford later called his grandfather, "The best man I ever knew."

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Brown's painting and the way he looked at the world

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made a lifelong impression on his grandson.

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He saw the world in radiant colour

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but unlike his pre-Raphaelite contemporaries,

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also revealed the grit, sweat and detail of modern life.

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What is it that makes him such a powerful figure,

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especially for Ford?

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Because, I think, he was an innovator.

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As a character, he was a maverick, an eccentric,

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he was prepared to stand up for what he thought was right in art

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and he breaks the mould.

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-This great picture here...

-Yes, The Last of England.

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Well, this is about the great emigration movement

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in the middle of the century, when after the industrial revolution,

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in a time of economic hardship for people,

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particularly for the middle classes, they have no option,

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maybe they have to leave England.

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-Brown puts himself...

-And his wife.

-..and Emma into the picture.

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And here you see him with his brooding

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and moody, apprehensive features.

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Look at the little strands of hair across her forehead.

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Look at her hand gripping her child, the baby's hand.

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-Absolutely.

-And her gloved hand.

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-It's pinching her hand.

-It is.

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The skin is all blue and puckered.

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Its an investigation of character, if you like.

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I always think that Brown is a painter who thinks like a novelist

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and Ford is a novelist who sees like an artist,

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and specifically, like a pre-Raphaelite artist,

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in all that detail and super-realism.

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Grandfather Brown imprinted a whole range of ideas

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into the young Ford's DNA, including a macro-lens for an eye,

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an uncompromising desire to modernise

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and unconventional social attitudes, especially when it came to women.

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Both grandfather and grandson had unsettled

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and highly unusual love lives.

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For Ford, the confusion and guilt in his personal relationships

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became the fuel and the theme of much of his greatest work.

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Ford is a writer who's consumed with the idea of love.

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There must be love. It gives the meaning to life,

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and yet love is the most savage and destructive thing possible.

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"The real fierceness of desire withering up the soul of a man

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"is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves.

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"He desires to see with the same eyes,

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"to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears,

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"to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported.

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"We are all so afraid, we are all so alone,

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"we all so need from the outside

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"the assurance of our own worthiness to exist."

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Ford met his first love, Elsie,

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when they were still children at boarding school in Folkestone.

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They became classroom sweethearts

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and ten years later, they were still passionately in love.

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But Elsie's parents were unimpressed with their daughter's boyfriend.

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Ford was a totally unsuitable match for their daughter.

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They clearly quite liked him as a person but just felt, you know,

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that they should take the heat out of the relationship a bit

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and of course, they did it in such a heavy-handed way

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that it made things worse. They tried locking Elsie in the house

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and not letting her out to see Ford.

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Ford urged Elsie to elope.

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"Do this no matter what happens.

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"Tonight is a wild and wet night.

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"It is the last night of the old time.

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"Something truer and better lies before us.

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"Be firm and hope,

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"better break down utterly and die than give in any way to deceits.

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"Hold yourself aloof and love me."

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On the way home to Kent with her sister, Mary,

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Elsie jumped off the train and boarded another train

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heading in the opposite direction.

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Mary telegrammed to alert her father.

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"Elsie has gone from Ashford. Beware Dover train. Mary."

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"Elsie not turned up. Look out at London stations."

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She even went off to Clifton near Bristol

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where it had been arranged for her to stay in secret

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with a friend of the family

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and Ford sort of went and joined her there

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and they got married there secretly, having lied about both their ages

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because Ford was only 20 and Elsie was three years younger.

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So they had to say that he was 24 and she was just 21

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so they could get married.

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It was also a very romantic thing to do

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and I think they felt they were, you know, living in a novel.

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They thought it was rather a romantic, novelistic escapade,

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the whole thing.

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This was the first of a slew of scandals that dogged Ford's life

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and was responsible for he and Elsie's decision

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to begin their marriage in a remote corner of Kent.

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Bloomfield Villa was cold and damp

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and the bohemian couple lived on the edge of poverty.

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But there was never much question that Ford

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would earn his living as a writer and here in Bonnington,

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he worked on a biography of his beloved grandfather

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and produced a number of poems, but isolation and money worries

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and Elsie's poor health quickly put the dampeners on the newlyweds.

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"I wonder why we toiled upon the earth

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"From sunrise until sunset, dug and delved,

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"Crook-backed, cramp-fingered, making little marks

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"On the unmoving bosoms of the hills,

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"And nothing came of it."

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But it was here in Kent

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that Ford made the most important creative relationship of his life

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when he and Elsie moved from the edge of the marshes

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to this small farmhouse on the downs.

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-I see there you've got a plaque to Conrad.

-We do.

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-But there's no plaque to Ford.

-I'm afraid not

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because he doesn't appear to be quite as well-known as Conrad.

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Certainly, Conrad was the first author that we heard about

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that lived here.

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Joseph Conrad was the Polish seaman

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who became one of the great figures of English fiction,

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author of The Secret Agent, The Heart of Darkness and Nostromo.

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He loved Conrad, obviously, admired him enormously.

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how did he come to meet Conrad?

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They met at the house of a mutual friend

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and they were there partly to be introduced to each other.

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Conrad wanted someone who was a native English speaker,

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who was a literary figure, as Ford was by then,

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to help him with his English and his writing.

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And the idea was that Ford might be able to help him.

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So how did they work together, how did they collaborate?

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They talked and talked and talked, they walked.

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They would do one page, one paragraph each, one chapter each.

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That sort of thing. They did it turn and turn about,

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by Ford's account anyway, and I expect that was how they did it

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rather than sitting in the same room and doing it.

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Their literary sensibility,

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their sense of being writers at a critical moment

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at the turn of the century, part of the modern movement,

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that was something they shared.

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They were, as you say, aware of themselves,

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or saw themselves as being part of a coming movement,

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making a break with the past.

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I think that was a very important part of the relationship,

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this intellectual identity.

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Conrad was 16 years Ford's senior

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and the literary marriage between these two great writers

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is one of the most unusual

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and intriguing collaborations of the age.

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Remarkably, during the years in which they worked side by side,

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the two men managed to write three novels together.

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What's more, its clear that Ford played a significant role

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on some of Conrad's greatest works, including his classic Nostromo.

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Close inspection of the manuscript of Nostromo

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reveals a number of paragraphs actually written in Ford's hand.

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But perhaps the greatest achievement of their collaboration

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grew from the hundreds of hours they spent, sitting, eating,

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drinking and talking together,

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arguing their own new theory of what the modern novel should be and do.

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They called this theory impressionism.

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"Impressionism exists to render those queer effects of real life

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"that are like so many views seen through bright glass -

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"through glass so bright that whilst you perceive through it a landscape

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"or a backyard, you are aware that on the surface,

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"it reflects a face of a person behind you.

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"For the whole of life is really like that.

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"We are almost always in one place

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"with our minds somewhere quite other."

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The collaboration with Conrad was intense and when Ford and Elsie,

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now with two small children,

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moved to her parents' village of Winchelsea,

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it was not long before Conrad

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was installed in a cottage just across the road.

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The to and fro between the houses may have helped their writing

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but it also created tensions.

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Conrad's wife Jessie took a strong dislike to Ford.

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Ford would drop in over the weekends and stay interminably long.

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In Jessie's words,

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"The longest I have ever known and a fit punishment

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"for any sins I might have committed or ever contemplated."

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Matters were not improved when the great Henry James came to tea

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and Ford managed to lock Jessie in the kitchen.

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And there were other problems.

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Over the three years he spent

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in the claustrophobic atmosphere of Winchelsea,

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Ford became increasingly sick and depressed.

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On top of this, his marriage to Elsie was under strain.

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But then there's this problem of did he have an affair

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with Elsie's sister, Mary?

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Was that going on there?

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There's some suspicion that there might have been.

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When you look at where the two houses are in Winchelsea,

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and Winchelsea is a real curtain-twitching place,

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you think, you could only do it by renting a hotel in Ashford.

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Could you manage an affair here and keep it secret?

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I don't know. I think it would have been pretty difficult.

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But I think Mary was quite a chancer and quite charming, and he was too.

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How much a relationship with Mary

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contributed to Ford's mental and physical breakdown in 1904

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we can't know, but illness led him

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to spend several months haunting the spas of Germany in search of a cure.

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It was a world he would return to some years later,

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and it would provide the setting for his novel of sexual deceit

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and betrayal, The Good Soldier.

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He came back to London towards the end of 1904

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and he tells this extraordinary story

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about the doctor that was called in, who was called Doctor Teb.

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Teb sort of looked at him and didn't say anything for a few minutes

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and then he says, "You'll be dead within the month."

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And he didn't prescribe anything, he just left.

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Ford then said he sort of got up, and was so angry with that,

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he sort of marched out and walked across Piccadilly Circus

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back and forth for an hour, you know, despite all the traffic.

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It was quite a dangerous thing to do,

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saying "I will not be dead in a month"

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and Ford thought that this had cured him.

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The jolt he got from the doctor was what brought him back?

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He did walk around a lot in London after that and that then turned

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into his book on London, The Soul of London,

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which was his first real success

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and that was the thing that really launched his literary career,

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made him feel that he could be a writer and a successful one.

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"England is a small island, but London is illimitable.

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"A brilliant windswept, sunny day,

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"with the fountains like haycocks of prismatic glitter

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"in the shadow of Nelson's column,

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"with the paving stones almost opalescent, with colour everywhere,

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"the vivid blue of the paper used by flower-sellers

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"to wrap poet's narcissi, the glint of straws blown from horse's feeds,

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"the shimmer of wheel marks on the wooden pavement.

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"Or is it the chaotic crowd,

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"like that of baggage wagons huddled together after a great defeat,

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"an apparently indissoluble muddle of grey wheel traffic,

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"of hooded carts, of buses drawing out of line,

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"of grimy upper windows through which appear white faces

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"seen from one's level on a bus top."

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Following the success of The Soul Of London,

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Ford's literary career began to grow in many directions.

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He produced an impressive trilogy of historical novels

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about Henry VIII's wife Catherine Howard

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and then in 1908, from his rooms on Holland Park,

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he embarked on his most ambitious adventure to date,

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a literary magazine called The English Review.

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The first edition included contributions

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from Conrad, Henry James, Galsworthy, a poem by Thomas Hardy,

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and even a short story by Tolstoy.

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How critical do you think The English Review was

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to the literature and the writers of the time?

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I think it was immensely important.

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He gathered together such an extraordinary group of writers

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for The English Review, and in a way, what defined it was the ability

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to mix the more established people with the avant-garde

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so some of the writing by people like Wyndham Lewis or DH Lawrence

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was very radical and clearly heralding

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the way modernism was going to develop.

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Ford plucked Lawrence from his job as a teacher in Croydon

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and introduced him to literary London.

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Lawrence recalled, "Ford asked to see The White Peacock

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"and read it immediately, and in his queer voice,

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"when we were sitting on an omnibus in London, he shouted in my ear,

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"It's got every fault that the English novel can have,

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"but you've got genius."

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"I always thought he had a bit of genius himself," Lawrence remarked.

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"He is the kindest man on Earth.

0:20:370:20:39

"He keeps the doors of his soul open and you may walk in."

0:20:390:20:44

Part of the difficulty of talking about Ford's influence,

0:20:440:20:47

is that he was influential in so many different areas at the same time,

0:20:470:20:50

you know, not just as a fiction writer but certainly as a critic,

0:20:500:20:54

and also as a poet and very much as a critic of poetry.

0:20:540:20:57

He had a really important friendship with Ezra Pound.

0:20:570:21:00

We think of Ezra Pound

0:21:000:21:02

as the most radical poet of the early 20th century,

0:21:020:21:05

one of the true architects of modernism.

0:21:050:21:08

But Pound was clear where his inspiration came from.

0:21:080:21:11

Years later, he wrote of his friend,

0:21:110:21:14

"The revolution of the word began in London in 1908

0:21:140:21:18

"with the lone whimper of Ford Madox Ford."

0:21:180:21:22

Ford's front door on Holland Park was always left open

0:21:230:21:27

for the constant stream of writers

0:21:270:21:29

who came proffering their manuscripts

0:21:290:21:31

and who he entertained with breakfasts, lunches and suppers.

0:21:310:21:36

Its fair to say that Ford was always enthusiastic about food

0:21:360:21:41

and in later life wrote a number

0:21:410:21:44

of entertaining, often nostalgic articles about meals and menus

0:21:440:21:48

he'd enjoyed in Edwardian London.

0:21:480:21:51

In one of the most extreme of these, a feature for the New York Herald,

0:21:510:21:55

Ford invented an unlikely menu for diners observing a strict Lent diet.

0:21:550:22:01

Chef Rowley Leigh, an admirer of both Ford's fiction and his food,

0:22:010:22:06

is preparing Ford's supposedly austere menu.

0:22:060:22:10

The beginning of this Lenten meal,

0:22:100:22:12

which, Alan, you'd normally consider a very adequate lunch...

0:22:120:22:17

-..is an omelette.

-This is simply the first course of a very long...

0:22:190:22:22

Simply the first course.

0:22:220:22:25

The main course on Ford's menu is a strange fish dish involving pike.

0:22:270:22:32

Ah, my God.

0:22:390:22:40

So this is...

0:22:420:22:44

This is a boudin de brochet

0:22:440:22:47

and it is a very fine pike forcemeat.

0:22:470:22:51

It's worked with egg white and cream and then some more cream.

0:22:510:22:55

-Of course.

-And then a little bit of cream.

0:22:550:22:58

It's an incredibly laborious process,

0:22:580:23:01

but this is one of the great classics, quenelles de brochet.

0:23:010:23:05

He did think, in some way, he was stinting himself.

0:23:050:23:09

In those days, people ate huge amounts

0:23:090:23:13

and he talks about suppers but these were the things he had after dinner.

0:23:130:23:17

After dinner!

0:23:170:23:20

And then just in case he thought he hadn't had enough egg,

0:23:200:23:24

or sugar, or cream, he had oeufs a la neige.

0:23:240:23:29

But they had no sense... Cream used to be considered good for you.

0:23:290:23:33

Even in my childhood.

0:23:330:23:37

-It's just goodness personified, isn't it?

-it is.

0:23:370:23:40

Eggs, sugar, cream.

0:23:400:23:41

But there was also something about him, isn't there?

0:23:410:23:45

I think he was extraordinarily likeable

0:23:450:23:47

and I think there's also a sort of vulnerability about him.

0:23:470:23:51

-Here's to Ford.

-Ford Madox Ford, great Englishman.

0:23:580:24:02

Even if he was half-German.

0:24:070:24:10

With the constant feeding and entertaining of writers

0:24:130:24:17

that went on in Holland Park, Ford needed somewhere to escape

0:24:170:24:21

in order to actually edit his magazine.

0:24:210:24:23

Where better than his local music hall?

0:24:230:24:27

On Friday nights, Ford would discretely head off

0:24:270:24:30

to the Shepherds Bush Empire,

0:24:300:24:33

accompanied by a great pile of manuscripts.

0:24:330:24:36

Apparently, during the performance, he mapped out his selections

0:24:360:24:39

for the next edition, pausing occasionally

0:24:390:24:42

when his favourite acts appeared onstage.

0:24:420:24:45

But for all the amusing anecdotes about his editing style,

0:24:470:24:50

at the helm of The English Review, thanks to his bravery and openness

0:24:500:24:54

and his intuition about writing,

0:24:540:24:57

Ford became the midwife of English literary modernism,

0:24:570:25:01

bringing into the world some of the greatest writers in the language.

0:25:010:25:05

Rather tragically, after only 12 months,

0:25:080:25:10

thanks to hopeless financial management and political rowing,

0:25:100:25:14

he was fired from his own magazine.

0:25:140:25:18

It was around this time that Violet Hunt entered his life.

0:25:210:25:26

Ford's relationship with Elsie had been unravelling

0:25:260:25:30

since his breakdown in 1904.

0:25:300:25:33

He was already living apart from her and his two daughters,

0:25:330:25:36

when four years later, Violet made her entrance.

0:25:360:25:41

Violet Hunt, nicknamed Immodest Violet,

0:25:430:25:45

was a Kensington novelist and beauty,

0:25:450:25:48

with a literary taste in lovers.

0:25:480:25:50

She'd been proposed to by Oscar Wilde,

0:25:500:25:53

had an affair with Somerset Maugham,

0:25:530:25:56

been chased by both HG Wells and the lesbian Radclyffe Hall,

0:25:560:26:00

and had herself even attempted to seduce the prim and proper Henry James.

0:26:000:26:06

Violet's relationship with Ford began when her editor

0:26:100:26:13

suggested she enlist his help with the promotion of her latest novel.

0:26:130:26:17

Apparently, Violet leapt on him,

0:26:190:26:21

here in Bedford Street in Covent Garden,

0:26:210:26:23

in what was then the heartland of British publishing.

0:26:230:26:26

She proceeded to proposition him.

0:26:260:26:28

He really must write a piece about her for a newspaper,

0:26:280:26:32

and Ford fell for it.

0:26:320:26:33

He was, he said, "awfully amused at her brass."

0:26:330:26:38

It was the initiation of a ten-year relationship

0:26:380:26:41

that brought both deep mutual misery and the inspiration

0:26:410:26:45

for the troubled relationships at the heart of his greatest fiction.

0:26:450:26:50

After months of courtship, in June 1909,

0:26:540:26:57

Ford and Violet became lovers.

0:26:570:26:59

Already well aware of the gossip they were causing,

0:26:590:27:02

they hoped they could marry as soon as possible.

0:27:020:27:05

In September, they went on holiday to stay with friends in Normandy.

0:27:090:27:12

It was the beginning of a sequence of events

0:27:120:27:15

that would scar Ford's reputation in Britain for the rest of his life.

0:27:150:27:19

As Ford and Violet returned from France to Charing Cross Station,

0:27:220:27:26

Elsie was waiting to confront them.

0:27:260:27:29

On spotting his wife, apparently, Ford muttered to Violet in dismay,

0:27:330:27:38

"Its all up, old girl! You'll see."

0:27:380:27:41

And he was absolutely right.

0:27:410:27:43

Furious with Ford's deception, Elsie gave up divorce proceedings

0:27:430:27:47

and instead sued for the restitution of her conjugal rights.

0:27:470:27:53

The writ was reported in the newspapers

0:27:530:27:55

and Ford and Hunt's affair was transformed from a rumour

0:27:550:27:59

into a scandal.

0:27:590:28:01

A scandal that only a few months later landed Ford in prison.

0:28:020:28:08

When Elsie's case came to court, Ford was ordered to pay maintenance.

0:28:080:28:12

He was already giving Elsie money

0:28:120:28:14

and bitterly resented the implication

0:28:140:28:17

that he was not supporting his family.

0:28:170:28:19

Refusing to obey, in an act of pride and typically Fordian self-sabotage,

0:28:190:28:24

he was sentenced to ten days in Brixton Prison.

0:28:240:28:28

For once, Ford seems to have written absolutely nothing

0:28:280:28:32

about this humiliating experience.

0:28:320:28:35

In the summer of 1910, partly as an escape

0:28:400:28:44

from the disapproval in the London air,

0:28:440:28:47

Ford and Violet Hunt went on an extended visit to Germany.

0:28:470:28:51

Travelling into the world of polite German society,

0:28:510:28:54

in the company of a woman who was not his wife,

0:28:540:28:57

lit the fire under what would become

0:28:570:28:59

Ford's intense and astonishingly modern novel, The Good Soldier.

0:28:590:29:05

The book is set in the German spa town of Bad Nauheim.

0:29:050:29:10

Though not directly autobiographical, it draws deeply

0:29:100:29:13

on Ford's turbulent emotional state during the months spent in Germany

0:29:130:29:18

after his nervous breakdown and his difficult year here with Violet.

0:29:180:29:23

The Good Soldier is Ford's masterpiece.

0:29:230:29:27

It begins, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard."

0:29:270:29:32

Short and shocking, it describes the adulterous and tragic affairs

0:29:320:29:36

of an English officer, Captain Edward Ashburnham.

0:29:360:29:39

It's set here in the hotels of Bad Nauheim.

0:29:390:29:43

It's a book about memories, about remembering and deceit.

0:29:430:29:49

There are certain books that you absolutely remember

0:29:490:29:52

your first reading of,

0:29:520:29:53

and The Good Soldier is that book for me.

0:29:530:29:56

I remember sitting on the floor of this terrible flat

0:29:560:29:59

and reading The Good Soldier sort of late into the night

0:29:590:30:03

and non-stop, and it did change my life.

0:30:030:30:05

And the reason it changed my life is because of the way its told

0:30:050:30:11

and because it... reveals the depths of the human heart

0:30:110:30:17

in a way that I think no other book does

0:30:170:30:20

and because it is savagely truthful

0:30:200:30:22

about what human beings are capable of.

0:30:220:30:25

That was the thing that gripped me at the age of 18.

0:30:250:30:28

I hadn't fully plumbed the wickedness of the human heart

0:30:280:30:34

until I read The Good Soldier.

0:30:340:30:36

There's four people, two couples,

0:30:380:30:42

centring around Ashburnham who is the good soldier of the narration.

0:30:420:30:47

It's... about their close relationship,

0:30:470:30:51

everything seems very transparent.

0:30:510:30:53

They're all good people, they're all very friendly

0:30:530:30:56

and behave very well. Yet, underneath,

0:30:560:30:58

this tremendous deception has been, as it were, lived out

0:30:580:31:02

which the narrator discovers very slowly

0:31:020:31:06

and very indirectly throughout the course of the years.

0:31:060:31:11

And it's the bewilderment of his own discovery

0:31:110:31:13

that he passes on to the reader.

0:31:130:31:16

He wants you to be as puzzled and as bewildered as he is

0:31:160:31:20

about the absolute contrast between how people appear to be

0:31:200:31:24

and what they really are underneath.

0:31:240:31:27

In fact, what they really are underneath,

0:31:270:31:29

is that what they really are? It's this perpetual labyrinth

0:31:290:31:32

and layering and unpeeling about what constitutes the human being.

0:31:320:31:37

It's very devilish.

0:31:370:31:39

"I would walk with Florence to the baths,

0:31:410:31:43

"and of course she entertained me with her conversation.

0:31:430:31:46

"It was wonderful what she could make conversation out of.

0:31:460:31:50

"When she came to the door of the bathing place,

0:31:500:31:53

"she would look at me with a little coquettish smile,

0:31:530:31:55

"so that her cheek appeared to be caressing her shoulder.

0:31:550:31:58

"Yes, that is how I most exactly remember her.

0:31:590:32:02

"For whose benefit did she do it?

0:32:020:32:06

"For that of the bath attendant? And the passers-by?

0:32:060:32:10

"I don't know. Anyhow, it can't have been for me."

0:32:100:32:15

The two couples take a day trip to nearby Marburg Castle

0:32:200:32:24

where the deception at the heart of the book becomes painfully apparent,

0:32:240:32:29

but even nine years after the event,

0:32:290:32:34

the narrator still struggles to comprehend this monumental betrayal.

0:32:340:32:39

As she explains the historical documents on display,

0:32:390:32:44

Florence, the narrator's wife,

0:32:440:32:47

"laid one finger upon Captain Ashburnham's wrist."

0:32:470:32:52

He gives you a fragment,

0:32:540:32:56

like the touching of the wrist, for example, that takes place.

0:32:560:32:59

He manipulates your perception of what appears

0:32:590:33:04

to be an absolutely devastating giveaway of a relationship.

0:33:040:33:10

He manipulates you back into seeing it as completely innocent.

0:33:100:33:13

When Ashburnham's wife, Leonora, sees Florence touch her husband,

0:33:140:33:18

she grabs the narrator and drags him out.

0:33:180:33:21

"I was aware of something treacherous, something frightful,

0:33:230:33:26

"something evil in the day.

0:33:260:33:28

"I can't define it and can't find a simile for it,

0:33:280:33:31

"and it was a panic in which we fled!

0:33:310:33:33

"We went right down the winding stairs,

0:33:330:33:36

"across the immense Rittersaal to a little terrace that overlooks the Lahn.

0:33:360:33:40

"Don't you see?" she said. "Don't you see what's going on?"

0:33:400:33:44

"No, what's the matter? Whatever's the matter?"

0:33:440:33:48

Ford makes it seem as if, at the time of writing,

0:33:520:33:55

the narrator had absolutely no idea that his wife was having an affair,

0:33:550:34:00

and this conceit, that the writer doesn't fully understand his own story,

0:34:000:34:05

continues throughout the book.

0:34:050:34:06

It's about, fundamentally, the savagery and instinct to kill

0:34:090:34:15

and ruthless brutality that there is in all of us.

0:34:150:34:19

Ford wrote The Good Soldier on the eve of the First World War

0:34:280:34:32

and every significant event in the novel

0:34:320:34:35

repeatedly shares the same date, the 4th of August,

0:34:350:34:39

the date on which the war began.

0:34:390:34:43

The collapse of the novel's spa society

0:34:430:34:46

mirrors the breakdown of European civilisation in 1914.

0:34:460:34:52

But its not just public events that echo through the book.

0:34:520:34:55

By the time The Good Soldier was published in 1915,

0:34:550:34:59

Ford's relationship with Violet Hunt was also falling apart

0:34:590:35:03

and three months after the novel came out,

0:35:030:35:07

Ford unexpectedly decided to become a soldier himself.

0:35:070:35:10

Violet knew their relationship was over.

0:35:100:35:14

Ford was assigned to the 3rd Battalion of the Welsh Regiment

0:35:150:35:20

and undertook his training at Cardiff castle.

0:35:200:35:23

The war did represent, I think, an escape route

0:35:230:35:28

really, from this weird and difficult set of relationships

0:35:280:35:33

he found himself in. For him, he thought,

0:35:330:35:36

"This is the most important thing, in the world,

0:35:360:35:40

"that's happened in my lifetime. I can't be on the edges of this.

0:35:400:35:46

"As a writer, as somebody who wants to make sense

0:35:460:35:50

"of experience in general, this is far, far too important to ignore."

0:35:500:35:56

On 13th July, 1916, after a nerve-wracking wait,

0:35:580:36:02

Ford and his unit left Cardiff for France.

0:36:020:36:06

Ford was anxious to get up onto the frontline,

0:36:060:36:09

partly to get a writer's view of the war

0:36:090:36:12

and partly out of a desire to do his duty.

0:36:120:36:14

However, because of his age, he was now 42 years old,

0:36:140:36:18

his commanding officer posted him with battalion transport

0:36:180:36:22

just behind the line, down there at Becourt Wood.

0:36:220:36:25

He might not have been on the first line of attack but he was still

0:36:250:36:29

well within range of the relentless barrage of the German guns.

0:36:290:36:34

It was an experience that gave him more than enough literary fuel.

0:36:340:36:38

"I remember standing at an observation post

0:36:400:36:43

"during the July push on the Somme, on the highest point

0:36:430:36:46

"of the road between Albert and Becourt Wood.

0:36:460:36:49

"In the territory beneath the eye or hidden by the folds in the ground,

0:36:490:36:54

"there must have been, on the two sides, a million men,

0:36:540:36:57

"moving one against the other and impelled by an invisible moral force

0:36:570:37:02

"into a Hell of fear

0:37:020:37:04

"that surely cannot have had a parallel in this world."

0:37:040:37:07

His reaction to the military is quite interesting.

0:37:130:37:16

He says in an early letter back

0:37:160:37:20

how much easier this is than being a writer.

0:37:200:37:23

This is a letter from the Somme.

0:37:230:37:25

Basically, in the army, all you had to do is do what you're told.

0:37:260:37:31

Life is relatively straightforward.

0:37:310:37:33

But of course he is observing it all the time,

0:37:330:37:35

as his letters to Conrad at that time show.

0:37:350:37:37

He's writing deliberately saying,

0:37:370:37:39

"This is stuff you might be able to use.

0:37:390:37:42

"It's interesting the difference in sounds between shellfire

0:37:420:37:45

"according to the kinds of countryside you're in,"

0:37:450:37:47

and then he details the differences.

0:37:470:37:49

"In woody country, heavy artillery makes most noise,

0:37:490:37:53

"because of the echoes.

0:37:530:37:54

"On marshland, the sound seems alarmingly close.

0:37:570:38:01

"On dry downland, the sound is much sharper,

0:38:040:38:07

"it hits you and shakes you."

0:38:070:38:13

Only two weeks after he arrived in the Somme, Ford was blown up.

0:38:200:38:25

Ford's wounds were superficial but the impact was enormous.

0:38:440:38:49

The reverberations of the explosion at Becourt Wood went on to shape

0:38:490:38:53

Ford's life and his literature for the next decade and beyond.

0:38:530:38:59

""After I was blown up at Becourt-Becordel in 1916,

0:39:040:39:07

"and having lost my memory,

0:39:070:39:09

"I lay in the Casualty Clearing Station in Corbie."

0:39:090:39:13

"I used to worry agonisedly about what my name could be."

0:39:140:39:18

For Ford the writer, the explosion at Becourt

0:39:260:39:29

and the horrors of his hospitalisation here

0:39:290:39:32

in the sheds and tents at Corbie were a powerful creative catalyst.

0:39:320:39:37

Back in hospital a few months later he wrote,

0:39:370:39:40

"I am in short rather ill still and sometimes doubt my own sanity.

0:39:400:39:45

"Indeed quite frequently, I do,

0:39:450:39:48

"and that is pretty well the condition of a number of men here.

0:39:480:39:53

"I wonder what the effect of it will be on us all, after the war."

0:39:530:39:56

Four years as a soldier

0:40:000:40:02

had a profound and wearying effect on Ford.

0:40:020:40:05

By the time the war ended he was in poor health and felt forgotten

0:40:050:40:09

and washed up as a writer.

0:40:090:40:11

However, once again he had fallen in love,

0:40:110:40:14

this time with a young Australian painter, Stella Bowen,

0:40:140:40:18

and after two years living together hidden away in the country,

0:40:180:40:23

Stella gave birth to a baby girl.

0:40:230:40:26

In 1922, Ford and Stella decided to leave England for a break in France.

0:40:300:40:36

He didn't realise it at the time, but for Ford,

0:40:360:40:40

this would prove to be the last of England.

0:40:400:40:43

His grandfather's famous painting of exile seemed strangely prophetic.

0:40:430:40:49

Ford would never live in England again.

0:40:490:40:53

Towards the end of 1922,

0:41:040:41:05

Ford and Stella with their infant daughter Julie

0:41:050:41:09

took up the offer of a villa here in the south of France at Cap Ferrat.

0:41:090:41:13

The winter sun was to prove a powerful and immediate catalyst.

0:41:130:41:18

For two or three days, Ford paced the grounds

0:41:180:41:20

of an idyllic garden overlooking the Mediterranean

0:41:200:41:24

as the structure and the philosophy of a new novel

0:41:240:41:27

began to take shape in his mind.

0:41:270:41:29

"I will here make a confession.

0:41:310:41:33

"I have always had the greatest contempt for novels

0:41:330:41:36

"written with a purpose.

0:41:360:41:38

"Fictions should render, not draw morals.

0:41:380:41:41

"But when I sat down to write that series of volumes,

0:41:410:41:43

"I sinned against my gods to the extent of saying

0:41:430:41:45

"that I was going to write a work that should have for its purpose

0:41:450:41:50

"the obviating of all future wars."

0:41:500:41:52

"Intense dejection, endless muddles, endless follies, endless villainies.

0:41:580:42:03

"All these men given into the hands

0:42:030:42:05

"of the most cynically care-free intriguers in long corridors

0:42:050:42:09

"who made plots that harrowed the hearts of the world.

0:42:090:42:13

"All these men toys, all these agonies mere occasions

0:42:130:42:16

"for picturesque phrases to be put into politician's speeches

0:42:160:42:19

"without heart or even intelligence.

0:42:190:42:22

"Hundreds and thousands of men tossed here and there

0:42:220:42:25

"in that sordid and gigantic mud-brownness of mid-winter."

0:42:250:42:29

After six years in which he had struggled to put words on paper,

0:42:340:42:39

Ford suddenly found himself writing with new purpose and energy.

0:42:390:42:44

As their summer in Provence drew to a close,

0:42:470:42:50

Ford and Stella decided to head back not to England, but Paris.

0:42:500:42:56

This cafe, Les Deux Magots, in the heart of Paris's left bank,

0:43:000:43:05

was one of the most popular drinking holes for artists and writers

0:43:050:43:09

and Ford made himself thoroughly at home here.

0:43:090:43:12

There's an extraordinary roll call of artists with whom Ford shared

0:43:120:43:16

a glass of Pernod during his Paris years,

0:43:160:43:19

including James Joyce who had only recently completed Ulysses,

0:43:190:43:22

and his old friend Ezra Pound.

0:43:220:43:24

A young American journalist called Ernest Hemmingway

0:43:260:43:29

and the Queen of the Parisian avant-garde, Gertrude Stein.

0:43:290:43:34

It was a cultural cocktail that fuelled Ford's creativity.

0:43:340:43:38

It not only provided the kind of background noise

0:43:380:43:41

he needed to write the four ambitious novels of Parade's End,

0:43:410:43:44

but it soon inspired a new project.

0:43:440:43:48

A brilliant and eclectic literary magazine

0:43:480:43:50

entitled The Transatlantic Review.

0:43:500:43:54

"The transatlantic review arose almost accidentally.

0:43:540:43:58

"A dozen times I was stopped on the boulevards

0:43:580:44:01

"and told that what was needed was another English Review.

0:44:010:44:05

"Then one day, crossing the Blvd St Michel,

0:44:050:44:07

"up near the Luxembourg Gardens, I met my brother.

0:44:070:44:11

"He said he wanted me to edit a review

0:44:110:44:13

"owned by friends of his in Paris!

0:44:130:44:15

"The startling nature of that coincidence

0:44:150:44:18

"with the actual train of my thoughts made me accept the idea

0:44:180:44:22

"even whilst we stood in the middle of the street."

0:44:220:44:25

What was distinctive, do you think, about HIS Transatlantic Review?

0:44:290:44:32

I think he put a lot of energy into it,

0:44:320:44:36

because he...gave a lot of stock to new writers,

0:44:360:44:41

young writers trying hard to write,

0:44:410:44:44

and he actually dubbed the Transatlantic Review "the enterprise for discovery of the youth".

0:44:440:44:52

There was a nightclub, I think, that he ran, didn't he?

0:44:520:44:55

Yeah, the Bal du Printemps was a high place of Ford's,

0:44:550:44:59

and Stella, obviously.

0:44:590:45:01

They held...

0:45:010:45:03

I think it was on Thursdays they had balls there

0:45:030:45:05

and they had people dancing and drinking,

0:45:050:45:08

and Ford was apparently not so much of a good dancer

0:45:080:45:11

as you would expect him to be,

0:45:110:45:13

because he was a bit heavy and he had problems breathing,

0:45:130:45:17

but he loved dancing.

0:45:170:45:19

In his last edition of The Transatlantic Review,

0:45:240:45:27

Ford printed an extract from a novel by an ex-chorus girl.

0:45:270:45:31

Her name was Ella Lenglet and she was married to a Dutchman

0:45:310:45:35

recently imprisoned for embezzlement.

0:45:350:45:37

On publishing the fragment,

0:45:370:45:40

Ford decided to change her name to Jean Rhys.

0:45:400:45:44

Stella Bowen later recalled...

0:45:440:45:47

The girl was a really tragic person.

0:45:470:45:49

She had written an unpublishably sordid novel

0:45:490:45:52

of great sensitiveness and persuasiveness.

0:45:520:45:55

Ford gave her invaluable help with her writing,

0:45:580:46:02

and I tried to help her with her clothes.

0:46:020:46:04

I was singularly slow in discovering that she and Ford were in love.

0:46:040:46:07

Ford's affair with Rhys is one of the most well-documented

0:46:140:46:18

and vitriolic love affairs in literary history.

0:46:180:46:22

All four parties - Jean, her Dutch husband, Ford and Stella -

0:46:220:46:26

all wrote about the relationship.

0:46:260:46:29

Rhys's poisonous caricature of Ford in her intense novel Quartet

0:46:290:46:34

both condemns and redeems Ford in the lurid extremity of its rage.

0:46:340:46:40

As he dressed she would lie with one arm over her eyes and think,

0:46:420:46:46

"A bedroom in hell might look rather like this one."

0:46:460:46:50

Her lips were dry.

0:46:500:46:52

Her body ached. He was so heavy.

0:46:520:46:54

He crushed her.

0:46:550:46:57

He bore her down.

0:46:570:46:59

The dim room smelt of stale scent.

0:47:000:47:03

She began to imagine all the women who had lain

0:47:030:47:06

where she was lying, laughing, or crying if they were drunk enough.

0:47:060:47:10

He always hurried the end of his dressing,

0:47:120:47:15

as if getting out of the room would be an escape.

0:47:150:47:18

Jean Rhys's portrait of Ford in Quartet undoubtedly

0:47:210:47:25

tarnished his reputation, but in reality it was Ford who helped her

0:47:250:47:29

get started as a writer, and in later life she admitted as much.

0:47:290:47:34

When it came to writing he was a very generous man

0:47:340:47:37

and he encouraged me a great deal.

0:47:370:47:39

I really don't think he tried to impose his ideas on me or anyone else

0:47:390:47:43

but his casual hints could be extremely helpful.

0:47:430:47:47

-Do you happen to have a cigarette?

-Yes, of course.

0:47:470:47:51

Ford's great war epic, Parade's End, took six years to write

0:47:510:47:56

and his affair with Jean Rhys occurred in the middle of that endeavour.

0:47:560:48:00

Although the books are set during the Great War,

0:48:000:48:04

at heart this is a compelling love story.

0:48:040:48:06

Parade's End is a fiercely original and experimental work,

0:48:080:48:13

with a strongly cinematic quality,

0:48:130:48:16

and it's now been brought to the screen by the director Susanna White

0:48:160:48:20

and the writer Tom Stoppard, a passionate advocate of the book.

0:48:200:48:24

If one looks at it as essentially a love story,

0:48:240:48:28

it's the story of a man between two women.

0:48:280:48:31

One of them he met at the wrong moment,

0:48:310:48:35

the other one he meets too late.

0:48:350:48:36

His sense of honour prevents him from acting dishonourably,

0:48:360:48:44

until the world becomes dishonourable.

0:48:440:48:48

-Christopher! There you are, at last!

-Yes, sorry.

0:48:480:48:52

-You look lovely.

-You look like thunder.

0:48:550:48:59

Sylvia Tietjens is one of the great characters in modern fiction,

0:49:010:49:08

erm, and Christopher is one of the most puzzling in a certain way.

0:49:080:49:15

We can't begin to decide whether he's sympathetic or unsympathetic,

0:49:150:49:22

stubborn or charming and so on.

0:49:220:49:24

On the one hand it's a vividly truthful novel about the war

0:49:300:49:33

but it's also about sex, about sexual politics,

0:49:330:49:37

about social change.

0:49:370:49:38

Actually...

0:49:390:49:41

you've reminded me that we've actually omitted to say something

0:49:410:49:45

very important about Parade's End, which is that it's a comedy.

0:49:450:49:49

It is sometimes grotesque, sometimes very dark,

0:49:490:49:54

but it's a comic masterpiece,

0:49:540:49:58

it's a comedic look at that part of the world at that time.

0:49:580:50:04

-Well, that's the thing, Potty.

-What thing?

0:50:040:50:07

SHE SIGHS

0:50:080:50:10

It's not for ever.

0:50:100:50:12

Yes, it is.

0:50:140:50:15

-I hope you're not going to behave badly.

-About what?

0:50:150:50:19

-About my going back, before it's too late.

-Oh, no, you're not!

0:50:200:50:26

-What are you talking about?

-I miss my husband.

-No, you don't!

0:50:260:50:31

-You called him a...a...great lump of wood!

-Oh, he is.

0:50:310:50:35

I often want to kill him just to see if there's any blood in him.

0:50:350:50:38

I'm permanently angry with him.

0:50:380:50:40

But he's spoiled me for any other decently groomed man in London.

0:50:420:50:45

He knows everything about everything.

0:50:450:50:47

It's the difference between being with a grown man and...

0:50:470:50:51

and trying to entertain a schoolboy.

0:50:510:50:53

-Why can't one get a man to go away with one and be just...

-SHE SIGHS

0:50:560:51:00

..light comedy?

0:51:000:51:02

I say, you're not going to kill yourself, I hope, Potty.

0:51:020:51:06

I want you to swear on your St Anthony that you won't leave me.

0:51:110:51:14

I'll do no such thing.

0:51:150:51:16

Then, I'll kill you if you try.

0:51:160:51:18

The French understand these things.

0:51:200:51:22

In these hotels one's been staying in the notepaper is simply shaming.

0:51:220:51:27

Sylvia is extraordinary, isn't she?

0:51:280:51:31

I mean, she's dangerous and manipulative but then she's also unexpectedly vulnerable.

0:51:310:51:35

One of the difficulties and one of the great things

0:51:350:51:39

about trying to write and, I daresay, play these characters

0:51:390:51:43

is that there's always a degree of apparent self-contradiction and internal contradiction.

0:51:430:51:50

It's probably why the book has appealed so deeply.

0:51:520:51:56

It does have the complexity of the people that you know in real life,

0:51:560:52:03

people you know well.

0:52:030:52:04

Is Mrs Duchemin really your mistress?

0:52:060:52:09

Or only Macmaster's?

0:52:090:52:12

Or both?

0:52:120:52:13

She's been Mrs Macmaster for six months.

0:52:140:52:17

There's a party tonight to announce it.

0:52:170:52:19

And what about that girl you were potty about at that horrible tea party?

0:52:210:52:25

-Has she had a war baby by you?

-SHE LAUGHS LIGHTLY

0:52:280:52:31

Everyone says she's your mistress too.

0:52:310:52:34

No, Miss Wannop is not my mistress.

0:52:340:52:38

It upset Brownlie so much,

0:52:420:52:44

he's going to refuse your cheques just to please me!

0:52:440:52:47

Oh.

0:52:490:52:50

Do bankers do that just to please their women friends?

0:52:520:52:55

HOT JAZZ PLAYS

0:52:570:53:01

In the autumn of 1926,

0:53:130:53:15

a couple of months after the affair with Jean Rhys had ended,

0:53:150:53:19

Ford sailed, without Stella, here to New York

0:53:190:53:22

for a speaking tour to promote the third of his Parade's End novels.

0:53:220:53:26

Ford was excited at the prospect of America.

0:53:270:53:30

On board he socialised with movie stars

0:53:300:53:33

and was thrilled to see reporters waiting on the dock.

0:53:330:53:36

He was sure they were waiting for him - well, perhaps -

0:53:360:53:40

but his arrival in the city was noted by several of the New York dailies.

0:53:400:53:45

The second volume of Parade's End

0:53:450:53:48

had sold almost ten times better here than in England

0:53:480:53:51

so Ford was in his element and more than ready to celebrate.

0:53:510:53:56

Everywhere he went Ford was welcomed by large, enthusiastic audiences,

0:53:570:54:01

including 800 society ladies over there at the Plaza Hotel.

0:54:010:54:06

He wrote articles, was toasted at literary lunches,

0:54:060:54:10

and of course met everyone who was anyone.

0:54:100:54:12

He enjoyed the adulation unashamedly

0:54:120:54:15

and reciprocated by falling head over heels in love with the city.

0:54:150:54:20

Standing in front of the buildings of Fifth Avenue,

0:54:210:54:24

he felt this was a place where you could think faster, feel faster

0:54:240:54:28

and see further.

0:54:280:54:30

America was a shot in the arm for him,

0:54:350:54:38

in the sense that the book sold,

0:54:380:54:40

and he also found New York incredibly exciting and energising.

0:54:400:54:47

-The noise, the cars, the...

-The vertical living.

0:54:470:54:51

He's interested in angles, he's interested in perspective.

0:54:510:54:55

Being asked to look up, being asked to look down.

0:54:550:54:58

And also grid living. I mean, that's the other thing, the way

0:54:580:55:01

in which you can stand on a corner and see these incredible distances.

0:55:010:55:04

His acceptance in America sort of almost turned him,

0:55:040:55:07

for many people, into an American, didn't it?

0:55:070:55:10

Yes, it did. It turned him into an American novelist.

0:55:100:55:14

Hemingway said that he became one of the two generally admired

0:55:140:55:19

American novelists at that point, or, sorry, novelists in America.

0:55:190:55:23

Which is interesting, because it does sort of move him

0:55:230:55:26

across the Atlantic into that environment.

0:55:260:55:29

It wasn't just America that Ford fell in love with.

0:55:310:55:35

After several brief affairs,

0:55:350:55:37

in 1930 he met a young American painter called Janice Biala.

0:55:370:55:42

"I do believe that for every man there comes at last a woman...

0:55:450:55:49

"No, that's the wrong way of formulating it.

0:55:490:55:52

"For every man there comes at last a time of life when the woman who then sets her seal upon his imagination

0:55:520:55:59

"has set her seal for good.

0:55:590:56:00

"He will travel over no more horizons,

0:56:000:56:03

"he will never again set the knapsack over his shoulders,

0:56:030:56:07

"he will retire from those scenes.

0:56:070:56:10

"He will have gone out of the business."

0:56:100:56:14

Ford and Janice remained together for the rest of Ford's life,

0:56:160:56:20

dividing their itinerant lifestyle between America, Paris and Provence.

0:56:200:56:26

Until they ran out of money,

0:56:290:56:30

Ford and Janice spent their summers

0:56:300:56:33

in a rented apartment in a villa in Toulon -

0:56:330:56:35

and it was here that Ford wrote a book called Provence,

0:56:350:56:40

illustrated with some of Janice's sketches.

0:56:400:56:43

The book is a wonderful concoction

0:56:430:56:46

of history, romantic anecdotes and recipes,

0:56:460:56:49

and it concludes in Ford's favourite place in the world,

0:56:490:56:52

the obscure Provencal town of Tarascon.

0:56:520:56:58

Tarascon was a sacred place for him ever since childhood,

0:57:030:57:07

when he saw his grandfather, Ford Madox Brown,

0:57:070:57:11

painting the medieval king and his bride

0:57:110:57:14

who built the town's fairytale castle.

0:57:140:57:17

This final scene of the book is written with

0:57:200:57:23

a flourish of typically Fordian self-mockery and good humour.

0:57:230:57:28

Flushed with cash for the first time in his life

0:57:290:57:32

thanks to a windfall from sales of Parade's End,

0:57:320:57:35

Ford and Janice took the first train to his beloved Tarascon.

0:57:350:57:39

A thundering mistral wind is blowing through the town,

0:57:390:57:42

but, undeterred, they head out to visit the castle,

0:57:420:57:46

Janice carrying a wallet stuffed with Ford's earnings.

0:57:460:57:50

Leaning back on the wind as if on an upended couch

0:57:520:57:56

I roared with laughter.

0:57:560:57:58

We were just under the great wall

0:58:000:58:02

that keeps out the intolerably swift Rhone.

0:58:020:58:06

Our treasurer - Janice Biala, keeper of the wallet -

0:58:060:58:09

her cap was flying in the air, over into the Rhone.

0:58:090:58:13

What glorious fun. The mistral sure is the wine of life.

0:58:140:58:20

Our treasurer's wallet was flying from under an armpit

0:58:230:58:26

beyond reach of a clutching hand.

0:58:260:58:29

More money than Ford had seen in a lifetime

0:58:310:58:33

had fallen out of Janice's wallet and into the depths of the Rhone.

0:58:330:58:38

Poor old Ford.

0:58:390:58:41

I hadn't been going to do any writing for a year. For two.

0:58:420:58:47

But perhaps the remorseless Destiny of Provence

0:58:480:58:52

desires thus to afflict the world with my books.

0:58:520:58:55

In the spring of 1939, after years of ill health,

0:59:000:59:04

Ford developed kidney problems while travelling back from America.

0:59:040:59:09

When he and Janice arrived in France they went to stay in this hotel,

0:59:160:59:20

the Cheval Blanc, in the picturesque coastal town of Honfleur.

0:59:200:59:25

Ford insisted on having a decent view right to the end.

0:59:250:59:29

He died on 26th June 1939

0:59:300:59:34

and was buried in the town cemetery at Deauville.

0:59:340:59:38

There were only three people at his funeral.

0:59:380:59:40

In a typically Fordian curse of fate,

0:59:400:59:43

the drunken sexton managed to bury him in the wrong spot

0:59:430:59:46

and after the war his coffin had to be reburied.

0:59:460:59:50

By the time of his death, in England, Ford was largely forgotten.

0:59:540:59:59

He'd lived in exile and scandal had obscured his reputation.

0:59:591:00:03

But over here in America he continued to be read and respected.

1:00:041:00:09

What's more, an elite and ardent band of Ford admirers

1:00:091:00:13

kept his flame alight.

1:00:131:00:15

It was Graham Greene who wrote, "There is no novelist of this century

1:00:151:00:21

"more likely to live than Ford Madox Ford."

1:00:211:00:24

He died in France in relative obscurity.

1:00:261:00:30

He loved America and they loved him.

1:00:301:00:32

And yet I think of him as such an English...artist,

1:00:321:00:36

such an English writer.

1:00:361:00:38

And I know that he was hugely influenced by French writing

1:00:381:00:42

and loved to be called...

1:00:421:00:43

you know, loved to be described as more French than the French

1:00:431:00:46

and loved to claim kinship with Flaubert and Maupassant and Daudet.

1:00:461:00:50

But the nostalgia,

1:00:501:00:53

the...the sentiment,

1:00:531:00:58

the romanticism, erm, the feeling for the past,

1:00:581:01:03

the anxiety, the trouble.

1:01:031:01:05

all that seems to me deeply, deeply English.

1:01:051:01:09

I can't help thinking he was born in the wrong era.

1:01:111:01:14

Perhaps the humorous, opinionated, overweight,

1:01:141:01:19

passionate and absurdly named Ford Madox Ford

1:01:191:01:23

would fit in better today than he did 100 years ago.

1:01:231:01:26

And if he was still around,

1:01:261:01:28

I can't imagine many people I'd rather have lunch with.

1:01:281:01:31

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