Where to start with Ford Madox Ford

British novelist, 1873–1939.

Best Ford Madox Ford book to start with: The Good Soldier (1915), on 5 of the 15 lists it could have made.

The Good Soldier is the place to start. It is short and it is narrated by a man who admits he does not have the whole story, so you are working things out alongside him. Two couples meet at a German spa town before the First World War, and what he tells you about them keeps changing. Read it slowly: the clues are in how he tells it.

Parade’s End is the long one. It is a sequence of four novels, and the index gives the year of the first. It follows a Yorkshire gentleman through the First World War and its aftermath, and critics rate it very highly, but it asks for a stretch of free time. Read The Good Soldier first and decide from there whether you want the bigger work.