0:00:01 > 0:00:02I haven't got any girl.
0:00:02 > 0:00:03There's no child.
0:00:03 > 0:00:06Over 100 of our best actors...
0:00:06 > 0:00:08You're the most beautiful creature.
0:00:08 > 0:00:10LAUGHS
0:00:10 > 0:00:13- 146 sets. - GUNFIRE
0:00:13 > 0:00:18- SHOUTING - An epic story of love, war and betrayal.
0:00:18 > 0:00:21You'd better keep off the grass.
0:00:21 > 0:00:23Ahh!
0:00:23 > 0:00:28And Sir Tom Stoppard, arguably our greatest living playwright,
0:00:28 > 0:00:33returning to the small screen for the first time in 30 years.
0:00:33 > 0:00:34Cut!
0:00:34 > 0:00:36I don't always love the job.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39I usually love the first draft, but this, I loved the job.
0:00:39 > 0:00:44It's all for Parade's End, a novel overlooked in its day,
0:00:44 > 0:00:46and rarely read now.
0:00:47 > 0:00:51I think it is a British equivalent of The Great Gatsby.
0:00:51 > 0:00:54It's a kind of suicide note to old England.
0:00:54 > 0:00:58When you've read it, your life is never quite the same again.
0:00:58 > 0:01:01Somehow, Ford Maddox Ford's modernist masterpiece,
0:01:01 > 0:01:04written for a particular place at a particular time,
0:01:04 > 0:01:06speaks across the decades.
0:01:06 > 0:01:10The issues that Ford is dealing with are issues of our times as well.
0:01:10 > 0:01:13Political corruption, financial corruption,
0:01:13 > 0:01:16war, unwanted war, there's a huge relevance to anybody
0:01:16 > 0:01:19who's ever had a stream of consciousness,
0:01:19 > 0:01:23who's ever fallen in love with the wrong person, or been in a relationship with an ill-fit.
0:01:23 > 0:01:25It's a very, very beautiful book.
0:01:25 > 0:01:28It may feel strange...
0:01:28 > 0:01:31like going to bed with somebody who really knew what they were doing,
0:01:31 > 0:01:33but what they were doing was slightly unfamiliar
0:01:33 > 0:01:35and it will make you smile.
0:01:35 > 0:01:39I will be in my room, praying for death, or at least packing for it.
0:01:39 > 0:01:41And, for the cast and crew,
0:01:41 > 0:01:45adapting it was a process of discovery as much as dramatisation.
0:01:46 > 0:01:51It's a wonderful blueprint for an actor, anyone trying dramatise any of those characters.
0:01:51 > 0:01:53We all fell in love with that book.
0:02:17 > 0:02:22We're now going to do an explosion test with the flying German.
0:02:27 > 0:02:30In a field in Flanders, a battle is being recreated
0:02:30 > 0:02:35in the name of a novel hailed by writers like Anthony Burgess
0:02:35 > 0:02:38as the greatest ever written about war.
0:02:41 > 0:02:45Parade's End snakes back and forth through past and present,
0:02:45 > 0:02:49from the drawing rooms of Edwardian England to the Western Front.
0:02:51 > 0:02:55But at its heart is a good, old-fashioned love story,
0:02:55 > 0:02:59centred around Christopher Tietjens, an upper-class civil servant,
0:02:59 > 0:03:02then soldier, caught between his wife Sylvia
0:03:02 > 0:03:05and a young suffragette, Valentine Wannop.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11Parade's End is about
0:03:11 > 0:03:17that incredibly claustrophobic world of the early 20th century,
0:03:17 > 0:03:23where people were just absolutely hemmed in by social convention.
0:03:23 > 0:03:27And how that deformed them, really, as characters.
0:03:27 > 0:03:29And broke people's lives.
0:03:29 > 0:03:34And I think Ford manages to capture that brilliantly.
0:03:34 > 0:03:40And all the time you just want to grab hold of these people and say, "Just tell her" or "Just do it."
0:03:40 > 0:03:43Oh, Christopher, these boys have got a motor.
0:03:43 > 0:03:46They're going to drive me to the Basils.
0:03:46 > 0:03:47All right.
0:03:47 > 0:03:51As soon as Mrs Wannop has had enough, I'll pop her in the tube.
0:03:51 > 0:03:55'It is a World War I drama, but it's not about the Front
0:03:55 > 0:03:57'as much as it's about the Home Front.
0:03:57 > 0:03:59'And it's really that kind of...'
0:03:59 > 0:04:01the ramifications of war
0:04:01 > 0:04:04on society, culture and particularly love relationships.
0:04:04 > 0:04:06You know, it's...
0:04:06 > 0:04:10And those love relationships are metaphorical for all sorts of other things.
0:04:10 > 0:04:13It deals with the biggest possible subject -
0:04:13 > 0:04:15that is to say, England..
0:04:15 > 0:04:18and the fate of England
0:04:18 > 0:04:20in the subtlest of ways.
0:04:23 > 0:04:26Originally released as four separate novels,
0:04:26 > 0:04:28between 1924 and 1928,
0:04:28 > 0:04:32Parade's End was written by Ford Maddox Ford.
0:04:32 > 0:04:38A novelist, critic, poet and editor, he was born Ford Hermann Hueffer
0:04:38 > 0:04:40in London in 1873
0:04:40 > 0:04:43to a German father and a British mother.
0:04:43 > 0:04:47He changed his name to Ford Maddox Ford in 1919
0:04:47 > 0:04:52partly to avoid being associated with Britain's wartime enemy.
0:04:52 > 0:04:58A close friend and colleague of literary giants like Ezra Pound and James Joyce,
0:04:58 > 0:05:02Ford is best known for an earlier novel, The Good Soldier.
0:05:04 > 0:05:08He wrote Parade's End a few years after incurring shell shock
0:05:08 > 0:05:10at the Battle of the Somme.
0:05:12 > 0:05:16Ford served. You know, you're reading about the war by a man who was there.
0:05:16 > 0:05:20He's a kind of historian of his own time. I think he said that himself.
0:05:20 > 0:05:26He's documenting a society telling its story...
0:05:26 > 0:05:27for good or ill.
0:05:27 > 0:05:32Of course, the book is a great warning about the terrors of war. It's an anti-war book.
0:05:32 > 0:05:36Part of his remit with...
0:05:36 > 0:05:38Parade's End was to write a book
0:05:38 > 0:05:41which would shock people into the realisation of...
0:05:41 > 0:05:43quite how costly war was.
0:05:43 > 0:05:48How...absurd, ironic,
0:05:48 > 0:05:51terrifying and ruinous it was.
0:05:51 > 0:05:53What does Parade's End mean?
0:05:53 > 0:05:56Well, it could mean it's all over. You know, let's all go home.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59But it means there will be no more parades.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02What are parades? What are military parades? They celebrate things.
0:06:02 > 0:06:05He says there are no more celebrations.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09Robert Graves put it a different way - Goodbye To All That.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12What did he mean by "all that"? He meant the pre-war world.
0:06:15 > 0:06:22Parade's End begins in 1912, during the so-called Edwardian Summer.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26NEWSREEL: Summer - leisure, relaxation and play.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30And when Father went out to bat, you watched.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34This is how you looked - mother, daughter and son.
0:06:36 > 0:06:40This was a world Ford had known for most of his adult life.
0:06:40 > 0:06:45A world where everything and everyone had their place.
0:06:45 > 0:06:49One's life really was that...
0:06:49 > 0:06:52up in the morning and then for a ride in the park.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56After that, tea perhaps somewhere.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59Scrumptious little iced cakes and strawberry ices.
0:06:59 > 0:07:03The table always had a beautiful white tablecloth on it.
0:07:03 > 0:07:06And lovely silver and flowers.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10But this is just one side of the story.
0:07:12 > 0:07:15This is also a time of great social upheaval.
0:07:19 > 0:07:22When people today say the Edwardian era
0:07:22 > 0:07:25is so glamorous and exciting and interesting,
0:07:25 > 0:07:28they're really only talking about one particular class.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30For most people in Britain,
0:07:30 > 0:07:33this is a period of great poverty and it's not
0:07:33 > 0:07:37a very pleasant place for most people to live.
0:07:38 > 0:07:42Women in particular were pressing for change.
0:07:42 > 0:07:45CHANTING
0:07:46 > 0:07:52One of the most exciting things about taking up the challenge of Parade's End
0:07:52 > 0:07:54was looking at the lives of women
0:07:54 > 0:07:58and how they were in this kind of pressure cooker and time of change.
0:07:58 > 0:08:03Their goal was to get the vote only for married women, and only for married women over 30.
0:08:03 > 0:08:05Votes for women.
0:08:05 > 0:08:08That was the cry from many a platform
0:08:08 > 0:08:12as a determined band of women campaigned for equal political rights with men.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15Some of them chose the way of peaceful persuasion.
0:08:15 > 0:08:20But others, the militant suffragettes, led by Mrs Pankhurst,
0:08:20 > 0:08:23used violent and sensational methods.
0:08:25 > 0:08:30It's into this world of contradictions and simmering tensions
0:08:30 > 0:08:33that Ford introduces his hero,
0:08:33 > 0:08:3726-year-old Christopher Tietjens is the son
0:08:37 > 0:08:40of a wealthy, land-owning Yorkshire family
0:08:40 > 0:08:45and he represents all the traditional values the War will soon sweep away.
0:08:45 > 0:08:48He's already a man slightly out of joint with his time at the beginning,
0:08:48 > 0:08:50he's a very old-fashioned man in the Edwardian world.
0:08:50 > 0:08:54The reason I fell in love with this character is because he's got
0:08:54 > 0:08:59a profound sense of duty and honour and virtue about him. He's a truly good man.
0:08:59 > 0:09:03A minister has to show the figures for the insurance bill mounts.
0:09:03 > 0:09:07Well, they won't. And I should have thought it was this department's duty to tell him so.
0:09:07 > 0:09:10When we first meet him, he's a statistician, a very good one.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13In a very senior position in the imperial civil service.
0:09:13 > 0:09:17You know, dealing with the facts and numbers which make the Empire work.
0:09:17 > 0:09:23So his brain's full of often abstract calculations of anything
0:09:23 > 0:09:28one might mention. He's a wonderful epitome, I suppose, in a sense,
0:09:28 > 0:09:32of what one would say an eccentric, but glorious English gentleman.
0:09:32 > 0:09:36I love every field and hedgerow.
0:09:36 > 0:09:40The land is England, and once it was the foundation of order.
0:09:40 > 0:09:44Before money took over and handed the country over
0:09:44 > 0:09:46to the swindlers and schemers.
0:09:46 > 0:09:48Toryism, the pig's trough.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51He's a Tory, but not in our version,
0:09:51 > 0:09:53our modern version of Toryism.
0:09:53 > 0:09:56It's not about free market capitalism,
0:09:56 > 0:09:59and it's not about releasing laws and taxation.
0:09:59 > 0:10:01It's about duty, and honour to the past,
0:10:01 > 0:10:03and to those above
0:10:03 > 0:10:05and below your station.
0:10:05 > 0:10:09Respect...but at heart, what's really good about him,
0:10:09 > 0:10:12is that he lives by this code of conduct
0:10:12 > 0:10:15whilst the world is going mad around him.
0:10:15 > 0:10:17And although he suffers a great deal by doing that,
0:10:17 > 0:10:22and at times sees himself that it's foolish,
0:10:22 > 0:10:24he's true to his word.
0:10:24 > 0:10:27And I think he has the most spectacular set of principles.
0:10:27 > 0:10:29I think if I lived half as principled a life
0:10:29 > 0:10:32as a man like Christopher Tietjens, I could die happy.
0:10:32 > 0:10:35Tietjens' perfect, ordered world
0:10:35 > 0:10:37is turned upside down by his wife,
0:10:37 > 0:10:40the scheming socialite, Sylvia Satterthwaite.
0:10:40 > 0:10:42A devout Catholic
0:10:42 > 0:10:44with a chequered past
0:10:44 > 0:10:47and a child who may or may not be Christopher's.
0:10:47 > 0:10:49I'm done with men.
0:10:51 > 0:10:54Sylvia, she's one of the most complex characters
0:10:54 > 0:10:57I've ever come across in drama.
0:10:57 > 0:11:01I'll settle down by his side and I'll be chaste.
0:11:01 > 0:11:03I've made up my mind to it.
0:11:03 > 0:11:06I'll be bored stiff for the rest of my life, except for one thing.
0:11:06 > 0:11:08I can torment that man,
0:11:08 > 0:11:11and I'll do it, for all the times he's tormented me!
0:11:11 > 0:11:13'She's a mass of contradictions.
0:11:13 > 0:11:19'She's simultaneously amoral, and yet, a devoted Catholic.'
0:11:19 > 0:11:22She's a big flirt, and yet, she's chaste.
0:11:22 > 0:11:24I'm here with a ghastly set.
0:11:24 > 0:11:26Would you like to take me on somewhere?
0:11:28 > 0:11:32'Sylvia is magnificently evil.'
0:11:32 > 0:11:33She wants to be a goddess.
0:11:33 > 0:11:34She looks amazing,
0:11:34 > 0:11:36and she sweeps into rooms
0:11:36 > 0:11:37and people fall at her feet.
0:11:37 > 0:11:40And the only person who doesn't fall at her feet -
0:11:40 > 0:11:43because that would be, for him, weird - is Christopher.
0:11:43 > 0:11:46So it makes her very bitter and twisted.
0:11:46 > 0:11:48DISH SMASHES
0:11:48 > 0:11:51- SHE LAUGHS - Do you know what he's doing?
0:11:51 > 0:11:55He's making corrections in the Encyclopaedia Britannica!
0:11:55 > 0:12:00If I'd killed him, no jury would convict!
0:12:00 > 0:12:02'She's emotionally intelligent.
0:12:02 > 0:12:05'She's bright, but she's utterly uneducated.'
0:12:05 > 0:12:07And she's bored, and she has nothing.
0:12:07 > 0:12:10So in a sense, all of that brain power
0:12:10 > 0:12:15goes into manipulating people.
0:12:15 > 0:12:17Oh, Christopher, has it been awful for you?
0:12:20 > 0:12:24It is thought that you went abroad to look after your mother.
0:12:27 > 0:12:29You'll get your own back.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31Only I wish you wouldn't do it by punishing me
0:12:31 > 0:12:34with your mealsack, Anglican sainthood.
0:12:35 > 0:12:37Even though he's constantly a victim
0:12:37 > 0:12:40of her machinations behind the scenes,
0:12:40 > 0:12:42of her direct assault on his person...
0:12:42 > 0:12:44BUT she is his wife.
0:12:44 > 0:12:46He will not hear a word spoken against her.
0:12:46 > 0:12:47He will support her actions
0:12:47 > 0:12:50because that is the gentlemanlike thing to do.
0:12:50 > 0:12:52Sylvia and Christopher,
0:12:52 > 0:12:56they're absolutely the two worst people to be married to each other.
0:12:56 > 0:12:59And it's therefore so reassuring for Christopher
0:12:59 > 0:13:00when he meets Valentine.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03She's the shape of things to come,
0:13:03 > 0:13:05and a very exciting shape she is too.
0:13:07 > 0:13:11A campaigner for women's rights, 18-year-old Valentine Wannop
0:13:11 > 0:13:16is the antithesis of Tietjens' bored, socialite wife.
0:13:16 > 0:13:19When she's not at work to help support her family,
0:13:19 > 0:13:22Valentine's out protesting for a better world.
0:13:22 > 0:13:24- We are the public!- No, you don't!
0:13:24 > 0:13:27'Valentine is full of integrity.'
0:13:27 > 0:13:30She has her own moral code
0:13:30 > 0:13:33that she's developed herself, without having been told.
0:13:33 > 0:13:36'She just knows what's right or wrong.'
0:13:36 > 0:13:39- Votes for women! - Oi! Come here, you!
0:13:39 > 0:13:41'She stands for things like democracy
0:13:41 > 0:13:43'and equal rights for women,
0:13:43 > 0:13:45'and all these values,'
0:13:45 > 0:13:47she's learned through her own experiences.
0:13:47 > 0:13:49She's the suffragette.
0:13:49 > 0:13:56She represents the woman who is going to make a better world.
0:13:56 > 0:13:59She is, if you like, the new, exciting woman.
0:13:59 > 0:14:05And the women who's not merely defined by her sexuality.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08She's very sensual, but she's also a woman of the mind.
0:14:08 > 0:14:10Actually, this tea is for my mother,
0:14:10 > 0:14:13and I mustn't inflict myself on Mr Waterhouse
0:14:13 > 0:14:15with my inferior mind
0:14:15 > 0:14:18and my general incapacity for anything much except motherhood.
0:14:18 > 0:14:20So, if you'll excuse me...
0:14:20 > 0:14:22Oh, that's my first suffragette!
0:14:23 > 0:14:26'The beauty of that love story, I guess,'
0:14:26 > 0:14:29is that they are intellectual sparring partners. They're equals.
0:14:29 > 0:14:32And I think...
0:14:32 > 0:14:34although they come at it from different angles,
0:14:34 > 0:14:35they're very, very similar people.
0:14:35 > 0:14:39They are outsiders in this time period,
0:14:39 > 0:14:41and Christopher is of the Tory mind
0:14:41 > 0:14:43and Valentine is more forward thinking.
0:14:43 > 0:14:45What's funny about them
0:14:45 > 0:14:47is that they both have such integrity
0:14:47 > 0:14:50in how they believe relationships should unfold.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53They try with all their might to kind of repress their feelings
0:14:53 > 0:14:54and just do the right thing.
0:14:57 > 0:15:00Feeling increasingly trapped by his situation
0:15:00 > 0:15:04and frustrated with the government bureaucracy,
0:15:04 > 0:15:06Tietjens makes a radical decision.
0:15:06 > 0:15:09Now, look here, Tietjens. I took you for a sound man.
0:15:09 > 0:15:13This department exists to show that, as there are different ways to put things in words,
0:15:13 > 0:15:16there are different ways to put things in numbers.
0:15:16 > 0:15:19I detest and despise the work I am asked to do in the Department,
0:15:19 > 0:15:23whose purpose seems to be to turn statistics into sophistry.
0:15:23 > 0:15:24I am resigning. Good morning.
0:15:24 > 0:15:28- Don't you want to be a man of influence?- No.
0:15:28 > 0:15:29I'd prefer to be in the trenches.
0:15:31 > 0:15:33RECORDING: 'Britain is an island,
0:15:33 > 0:15:37'and that has always made her different, alone, and secure.
0:15:40 > 0:15:44'All the same, 1914 saw some pretty fast trench digging
0:15:44 > 0:15:45'along the coasts.
0:15:45 > 0:15:46'As people remarked,
0:15:46 > 0:15:50'anybody would think the Kaiser was going to invade.
0:15:50 > 0:15:52'Different, alone, and secure.
0:15:53 > 0:15:57'Yet, not for the first time in history, and not for the last,
0:15:57 > 0:16:00'Britain sent her best to fight Europe's battles overseas.
0:16:02 > 0:16:04'Off they went, to what?
0:16:04 > 0:16:07'Another brush with the Boers.
0:16:07 > 0:16:10'Such should be the nature of wars to date.
0:16:10 > 0:16:12'Certainly, none of them realised they were to be the first
0:16:12 > 0:16:16'in the greatest human sacrifice in history.'
0:16:18 > 0:16:20The carnage of the trenches
0:16:20 > 0:16:24has inspired countless novels, films, and poems.
0:16:24 > 0:16:27But, for Ford Maddox Ford, who'd been close to the front line,
0:16:27 > 0:16:32it was bureaucracy as much as battle that broke a man's spirit.
0:16:32 > 0:16:36'It's as much to do with the mundanities of moving troops,'
0:16:36 > 0:16:39of checking the right people are being asked for fire extinguishers.
0:16:39 > 0:16:43That the cook has put his uniforms and utensils away in the right place.
0:16:43 > 0:16:48It's about the day-to-day running and mundanities of war.
0:16:48 > 0:16:51And I think that's why it reads, to me, as being authentic.
0:16:51 > 0:16:53When we tend to think about
0:16:53 > 0:16:55the literature of the First World War,
0:16:55 > 0:16:57we tend to think of the poetry.
0:16:57 > 0:16:59You know, we think about Sassoon,
0:16:59 > 0:17:01we think about Owen...
0:17:06 > 0:17:09..and we think about these incredibly visceral,
0:17:09 > 0:17:13horrific descriptions of the trenches.
0:17:13 > 0:17:14The blood and guts and gore.
0:17:14 > 0:17:17But, even though this is very serious novel,
0:17:17 > 0:17:20Ford has a real gift for comedy.
0:17:20 > 0:17:23I mean, it's quite subtle, and in places,
0:17:23 > 0:17:27is reminiscent of Blackadder Goes Forth,
0:17:27 > 0:17:29Catch-22, books like that.
0:17:29 > 0:17:31It's been our pleasure to fit out you and your men
0:17:31 > 0:17:32for the task ahead...
0:17:32 > 0:17:35- PHONE RINGS - Somebody deal with that telephone.
0:17:35 > 0:17:40Or even the Keystone Cops, or that kind of approach.
0:17:40 > 0:17:43Bumbling, idiotic, British generals,
0:17:43 > 0:17:48crazy bureaucracy, massive frustration.
0:17:48 > 0:17:52I notice, Captain Tietjens, you have no fire extinguishers in your unit.
0:17:52 > 0:17:54You're aware of the disastrous consequences
0:17:54 > 0:17:56that would follow a conflagration?
0:17:56 > 0:17:58Yes, sir. I was informed by ordinance
0:17:58 > 0:18:01that there is no provision for fire extinguishers
0:18:01 > 0:18:04for dominion troops under an Imperial officer.
0:18:04 > 0:18:07So I applied, as advised, to a civilian firm...
0:18:07 > 0:18:08I don't ask for your memoirs.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11Make a note, Levin.
0:18:11 > 0:18:13Sometimes it's almost a bit like M.A.S.H.
0:18:13 > 0:18:17That you're looking at the absurdity of the bureaucracy.
0:18:18 > 0:18:21Christopher can't get fire extinguishers which he needs
0:18:21 > 0:18:24because the bureaucrats won't let him have them,
0:18:24 > 0:18:26for complicated reasons.
0:18:26 > 0:18:28There's endless form-filling to be done.
0:18:28 > 0:18:31People are sent the wrong uniforms,
0:18:31 > 0:18:35and he's able to laugh at the absurdity of the war,
0:18:35 > 0:18:38while taking you to very deep places
0:18:38 > 0:18:41about people's emotional state and mental state.
0:18:41 > 0:18:45And looking at some of the cleverest young men in England
0:18:45 > 0:18:48trying to hang on to their sanity.
0:18:48 > 0:18:51So there are these brilliant minds writing sonnets
0:18:51 > 0:18:53in an attempt to stay sane.
0:18:55 > 0:18:59Give me the rhyme words for a sonnet.
0:18:59 > 0:19:02That's the scheme of it.
0:19:02 > 0:19:04I know what a damn sonnet is! What's your game?
0:19:04 > 0:19:08Give me 14 end rhymes of a sonnet and I'll write a sonnet.
0:19:08 > 0:19:11- In two and a half minutes!- If you do, I'll translate it into Latin
0:19:11 > 0:19:13- in under three minutes. - Get on with it, then.
0:19:13 > 0:19:17A-B-B-A-A-B... Yes? What is it?
0:19:22 > 0:19:26How Tietjens, Sylvia and Valentine emerge from the futility
0:19:26 > 0:19:28is one of the great pleasures in reading the book,
0:19:28 > 0:19:31but needless to say, by the end of the story,
0:19:31 > 0:19:34nothing and nobody is left untouched.
0:19:36 > 0:19:40Tietjens goes through some really horrific experiences.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43Ford uses this as a way of showing us
0:19:43 > 0:19:48how the old order is forced to change
0:19:48 > 0:19:50through their experiences in the war. I'm thinking of...
0:19:50 > 0:19:55There's just one really quite wonderful passage in the novel
0:19:55 > 0:19:59were Ford writes about how Tietjens and a young soldier
0:19:59 > 0:20:02are literally buried alive
0:20:02 > 0:20:05and the young man who's been buried with him is calling out,
0:20:05 > 0:20:08"Help me! Please, help me, Captain!"
0:20:08 > 0:20:11And Tietjens says something very, very important.
0:20:11 > 0:20:14Tietjens just yells back,
0:20:14 > 0:20:19"I can't help you until I've helped myself."
0:20:19 > 0:20:21So it's a really important moment of the novel
0:20:21 > 0:20:25because it's Tietjens recognising that there comes a point
0:20:25 > 0:20:30where virtue is no longer the right way to act.
0:20:30 > 0:20:32He has to save himself first.
0:20:45 > 0:20:47BELLS TOLL
0:20:48 > 0:20:51It was just six years after the Armistice
0:20:51 > 0:20:54when the first volume of Parade's End was published,
0:20:54 > 0:20:56with the others following soon after.
0:20:56 > 0:21:01Feted in America, the reception at home was lukewarm at best.
0:21:02 > 0:21:06This was as much to do with the way it was written
0:21:06 > 0:21:08as its unheroic portrayal of war.
0:21:08 > 0:21:11Ford Madox Ford, he's a modernist,
0:21:11 > 0:21:14not just in the sense that he's writing about the present day
0:21:14 > 0:21:16but in fact, that he's doing so
0:21:16 > 0:21:19with a whole new set of tools.
0:21:19 > 0:21:22There's all this kind of play with chronicle, you know,
0:21:22 > 0:21:24this kind of shifting around in time.
0:21:24 > 0:21:29We're here, we're there, we're in the past, we're in the present.
0:21:29 > 0:21:30A book like this,
0:21:30 > 0:21:34which transforms many of the basic rules of storytelling and writing,
0:21:34 > 0:21:37would have been perceived as difficult.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42It must have been quite a shock to hear such a complex story
0:21:42 > 0:21:46told at such a helter-skelter, modernist pace.
0:21:46 > 0:21:49It was almost as if people were seeing their world forged anew,
0:21:49 > 0:21:53which is really, I guess, what the Modernist movement was.
0:21:53 > 0:21:55But as the decades passed
0:21:55 > 0:21:58and readers became more familiar with this style of writing,
0:21:58 > 0:22:02critical and popular opinion towards Parade's End changed.
0:22:02 > 0:22:06Ford, in fact, is very instructive to a later generation of novelists -
0:22:06 > 0:22:08Graham Greene, notably.
0:22:08 > 0:22:11Graham Greene could not have written as he did write
0:22:11 > 0:22:14were it not for the fact that he was steeped in Ford.
0:22:17 > 0:22:19Its growing recognition as a modern classic
0:22:19 > 0:22:22was confirmed in 1964
0:22:22 > 0:22:26when the BBC adapted it for the first time.
0:22:26 > 0:22:29DRAMATIC BRASS MUSIC
0:22:30 > 0:22:34The three parts faithfully mirrored the first three novels,
0:22:34 > 0:22:40starring Ronald Hines, playing Tietjens as a blustering aristocrat
0:22:40 > 0:22:43and a young Judi Dench as Valentine Wannop
0:22:43 > 0:22:46in one of her earliest roles.
0:22:46 > 0:22:48I say!
0:22:49 > 0:22:51Go and see that they don't hurt Gertie, will you?
0:22:51 > 0:22:53What?
0:22:53 > 0:22:56WOMAN SCREAMS
0:22:56 > 0:22:57What's going on?
0:22:57 > 0:23:00I didn't like...well, the look of them, not at all.
0:23:00 > 0:23:02- I say!- You've been demonstrating.
0:23:02 > 0:23:05- Yes, of course, but look! - What possible good do you think...
0:23:05 > 0:23:07You wouldn't let a girl be manhandled,
0:23:07 > 0:23:09even if you are against...
0:23:11 > 0:23:13- Oh!- Here! Wait a moment!
0:23:13 > 0:23:16But unlike many of our classic novels,
0:23:16 > 0:23:20Parade's End hasn't been attempted again until now.
0:23:20 > 0:23:22What do you want?
0:23:22 > 0:23:23891, take four.
0:23:25 > 0:23:29The task of adapting it fell to Sir Tom Stoppard.
0:23:29 > 0:23:30For a man who's tackled everything
0:23:30 > 0:23:33from Shakespeare's love life to quantum physics,
0:23:33 > 0:23:37- you'd think Ford Madox Ford would be a walk in the park.- Cut there.
0:23:37 > 0:23:39HE LAUGHS
0:23:41 > 0:23:48The novels are not structured to accommodate a television series.
0:23:48 > 0:23:51The book itself is structured in a very complex manner.
0:23:51 > 0:23:53It was not a linear story
0:23:53 > 0:23:56when you read it from page 1 to page 700 or whatever.
0:23:58 > 0:24:00The consequence is
0:24:00 > 0:24:03- I'm slightly proud and slightly embarrassed by this -
0:24:03 > 0:24:09that there are quite a lot of scenes in this Parade's End
0:24:09 > 0:24:11which simply don't exist in the book.
0:24:11 > 0:24:16They are, if you like, suggested by the book
0:24:16 > 0:24:18but the mise en scene,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21you know, Where are we, what are we doing here,
0:24:21 > 0:24:24has had to be invented to some degree.
0:24:24 > 0:24:27One would look into social history
0:24:27 > 0:24:30and other sorts of reference books
0:24:30 > 0:24:34and find out what was going on at such a time.
0:24:34 > 0:24:39For instance, there's a scene where Valentine witnesses a slashing
0:24:39 > 0:24:43of the Rokeby Venus painting in the National Gallery.
0:24:43 > 0:24:45Do you think that is all woman are good for?
0:24:47 > 0:24:50Hey! What are you doing?
0:24:50 > 0:24:54Ford never wrote about that at all, but Tom took the liberty
0:24:54 > 0:24:56of using something that would add to our big theme.
0:24:56 > 0:24:59'There were lots of things going on
0:24:59 > 0:25:03'which I thought about using but never actually did.'
0:25:03 > 0:25:06I'm happy to say that the Titanic doesn't figure in my story
0:25:06 > 0:25:09since it figures in everybody else's stories of that period.
0:25:12 > 0:25:14For writer and director,
0:25:14 > 0:25:17the novel provided an opportunity to get closer
0:25:17 > 0:25:22to the unique visual language at the heart of Ford Madox Ford's style.
0:25:22 > 0:25:24It was the beginning of modernism,
0:25:24 > 0:25:30and we wanted to try to reflect the artistic culture of the time.
0:25:30 > 0:25:32Ford Madox Ford was tremendously visual.
0:25:32 > 0:25:34His grandfather was a painter,
0:25:34 > 0:25:39he was friendly with the big artists of the day - Picasso, Juan Gris,
0:25:39 > 0:25:43and I was very keen to use some of the First World War artists
0:25:43 > 0:25:46and particularly Paul Nash,
0:25:46 > 0:25:48so these organic muddy curves
0:25:48 > 0:25:50with fractured trees.
0:25:52 > 0:25:54There's one huge shot of a battlefield
0:25:54 > 0:25:57which was like a Nash painting brought to life.
0:25:57 > 0:26:00GUNFIRE
0:26:02 > 0:26:04MOURNFUL BRASS MUSIC
0:26:04 > 0:26:05# Fair and kind... #
0:26:05 > 0:26:07Miss Wannop.
0:26:09 > 0:26:11Mr Tietjens.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15I used some devices - the set of three mirrors,
0:26:15 > 0:26:18which is a technique pioneered by the vorticist photographers,
0:26:18 > 0:26:21which I loved as an idea because it reflects the love triangle,
0:26:21 > 0:26:25but also, plays with image as the Cubists did.
0:26:26 > 0:26:29I found by playing with these mirrors,
0:26:29 > 0:26:30we could take Rebecca Hall's face
0:26:30 > 0:26:33and kind of put her nose where her ear should be
0:26:33 > 0:26:35and make her look like a Picasso painting
0:26:35 > 0:26:37and Tom and I suddenly got very excited by that
0:26:37 > 0:26:41as we explored the possibilities of that, because we felt it was a style
0:26:41 > 0:26:43that was entirely appropriate to the material.
0:26:43 > 0:26:46DOG BARKS
0:26:46 > 0:26:50Today, we're exactly 100 years on from where Parade's End begins
0:26:50 > 0:26:53but far from making it seem old hat,
0:26:53 > 0:26:55the passage of time has only served
0:26:55 > 0:26:59to make the novel appear fresher and more relevant than ever.
0:26:59 > 0:27:03'I think our fascination with this period is a rich and complex one.
0:27:03 > 0:27:04'I think part of it is the fact
0:27:04 > 0:27:08'that it's an era on the edge of change, and that it's such a forcibly
0:27:08 > 0:27:10painful birth into a new modern era
0:27:10 > 0:27:14and that the war marked it. That's, I think, one of our fascinations,
0:27:14 > 0:27:17the other one being that it is an era now that only survives
0:27:17 > 0:27:20through accounts. We don't have a living link to that era any more.
0:27:20 > 0:27:23EXPLOSIONS, GUNFIRE
0:27:23 > 0:27:27The issues that Ford is dealing with our issues of our times as well.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30It's issues about, what does it mean to be English?
0:27:30 > 0:27:32What does it mean to be British?
0:27:32 > 0:27:35The role of virtue in our society.
0:27:35 > 0:27:39What is the role of the good man?
0:27:39 > 0:27:41We looked at the politics of Europe,
0:27:41 > 0:27:44we looked at the politics of this country and all the uncertainty,
0:27:44 > 0:27:50the way all our would-be leaders have been in the dock recently,
0:27:50 > 0:27:53you know, whether it's bankers, politicians, press barons,
0:27:53 > 0:27:55everything seems up for grabs.
0:27:55 > 0:27:59Society seems about to, you know, go topsy-turvy.
0:27:59 > 0:28:02I think one has to say, works of art have their moment.
0:28:02 > 0:28:03This may be the moment.
0:28:03 > 0:28:06It is not so well-known, and now it's going to be.
0:28:12 > 0:28:17Next weekend on BBC Two, Alan Yentob examines the extraordinary career
0:28:17 > 0:28:21of Ford Madox Ford in a Culture Show special.
0:28:21 > 0:28:24Ford became the midwife of English literary modernism,
0:28:24 > 0:28:28bringing into the world some of the greatest writers of the language.
0:28:49 > 0:28:52Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd