Last Post A Novel

Widely acclaimed when first published in the 1920s, Ford Madox Ford's sequence of four novels, known collectively as Parade's End, is one of the outstanding works about the Great War and British society before, during, and after that cataclysm. A major work of Modernism, it is an investigation of time, history, and sexuality. This novel, the fourth and final volume, is set on a single summer's day and follows the characters into the unsettling and often disorientating postwar world. With fluency, humor and great skill, this narrative explores their individual memories, hopes, and uncertainties, while also subtly questioning the current and future state of England.

Ford Madox Ford was an influential editor, essayist, critic, poet, and novelist. The author of more than 80 books, including The Fifth Queen, The Good Soldier, It Was the Nightingale, and Provence, he collaborated with Joseph Conrad and befriended many of the best writers of his time, including Henry James, H. G. Wells, Stephen Crane, and Thomas Hardy. Ford also founded the English Review—discovering D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, and Ezra Pound—and the transatlantic review in Paris, taking on Ernest Hemingway as a copy editor and publishing the works of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. Paul Skinner is a former professor at the University of Bristol and at the University of the West of England. He has published articles on Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, and Rudyard Kipling, and a pocket guide to London’s museums. He currently works in publishing.