Last Post

Last Post, the fourth and final volume of Parade's End, is set on a single post-war summer's day. Valentine Wannop and Christopher Tietjens share a cottage in Sussex with Tietjens' brother and sister-in-law. Through their differing perspectives, Ford explores the tensions between his characters in a changing world, haunted by the experience of war, facing an insecure future for themselves and for England. The Tietjens' ancestral home has been let to an American, its great tree felled; those like Tietjens who have served in the war find there is no place for them in a demoralised civilian society. The celebrations of Armistice Day have been replaced by the uncertainties of peacetime.The novel is divided into two unequal parts, the first comprising almost two-thirds of the whole. Christopher Tietjens now makes his living as a dealer in old furniture. He and Valentine Wannop share a cottage in West Sussex with Christopher's older brother Mark and Mark's French wife, Marie Léonie. The first, longer part explores this ménage and the wider community that surrounds it. Last Post frequently picks up on incidents and references from the earlier volumes, enlarging upon them or offering alternative perspectives and interpretations. The second part of the novel concentrates on the threats to the occupants of the cottage and their way of life that is presented by the intrusion of Christopher's estranged wife Sylvia, their son, the American tenant that has moved into Groby, the Tietjens family's ancestral home, and others.