Parade's End

[Anna]

As to the audio quality that Caliban found poor, there have been comments about this particularly on HD. I don't have HD, just an elderly Philips, and had no problem whatsoever. However, it is obviously a series that requires 100% concentration and unlike Downton, you cannot attempt the crossword or faff about with your ipad or blackberry at the same time!
I did look on Amazon and considered buying the book on Saturday but I think it's too late to try and catch up now the series has begun.

[amateur51]

As to the audio quality that Caliban found poor, there have been comments about this particularly on HD. I don't have HD, just an elderly Philips, and had no problem whatsoever.

I didn't realise that you ran to staff chez Anna!

[Nick Armstrong]

I didn't realise that you ran to staff chez Anna!

Great vision of Anna's ancient retainer hastening to the set to turn up the volume, then hurrying back to the chaise longue to replenish Modom's Montepulciano! "Be quick about it, Philips!!"

[amateur51]

Great vision of Anna's ancient retainer hastening to the set to turn up the volume, then hurrying back to the chaise longue to replenish Modom's Montepulciano! "Be quick about it, Philips!!"

Known in the village as QDP*



Quickly Dammit Philips!*

[amateur51]

Although far more serious in intent, I wonder if anyone else sees certain similarities in the character of Sylvia Tietjens and some of the heroines in the works of E F Benson?

[Stunsworth]

If anyone wants to read the books, and has a Kindle, iPad or similar, the tetralogy is available in the Amazon Kindle store for 77p...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009144F2A/ref=s9_simh_gw_p351_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=03M3EFH1EVFF81M0PDZS&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=317828027&pf_rd_i=468294

[Anna]

BBC2 this evening 9.30, a Culture Show special Who on Earth was Ford Madox Ford presented by Alan Yentob. Might be a bit of a mish-mash as included is a chef on his favourite meals but probably worth viewing. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mlvkj
Won't say anything about episode 2 but thought it brilliant and again, definitely no audio probs here.

[Richard Tarleton]

The bird which poked its head out of the grouse moor a few days too early to be shot was a red-legged partridge, an impossibility in 1914 Northumberland. This is a bit as if the props department had put up a print of Manet's Olympia for the suffragette to smash.

Presumably the fish eagle [sic] had some non-literal significance. Ospreys had been extinct as a breeding species in Scotland for a few years prior to 1914, and the chances of seeing one on passage off the Northumberland coast in August were approximately zero. And CJ did not have his binoculars.

Those chalk cliffs looked suspiciously like the Seven Sisters......

Clearly I should stick to watching "Countryfile", or "Coast" (before anyone else says it ).

[vinteuil]

Presumably the fish eagle [sic] had some non-literal significance. Ospreys had been extinct as a breeding species in Scotland for a few years prior to 1914, and the chances of seeing one on passage off the Northumberland coast in August were approximately zero.

).

In the book, Ford is less specific : "The man told her to look up; high, circling and continuing for a long time to circle; illuminated by the sunlight below, like a pale flame against the sky was a bird. The man told her that that was some sort of fish-eagle or hawk."

In the book, it is an earlier memory Sylvia is recalling, with an unspecified man - in the telewele version they, reasonably? - tighten it to the 1914 shoot and Tietjens.

[vinteuil]

.

Presumably the fish eagle [sic] had some non-literal significance. ).

[furtherto my #39... ]

Ford - and Sylvia - are explicit about the significance :

"It pleased her to see that, though nothing threatened the gulls. they yet screamed and dropped their herrings... The whole affair reminded her of herself in her relationship to the ordinary women of the barnyard... "

[mercia]

finding it quite difficult to be interested in any of these characters
hoping the war will wipe them all out
best line, episode 2, "the bishop turned out to be a christian"

[Richard Tarleton]

[furtherto my #39... ]

Ford - and Sylvia - are explicit about the significance :

"It pleased her to see that, though nothing threatened the gulls. they yet screamed and dropped their herrings... The whole affair reminded her of herself in her relationship to the ordinary women of the barnyard... "

Thanks, vinteuil, that makes perfect sense and what a beautifully written scene. The bit of Stoppard shorthand we saw - with a bit of library footage pasted in - rather blew it.

I haven't forgotten the chaffinch on the soundtrack of "Full Metal Jacket"

[vinteuil]

finding it quite difficult to be interested in any of these characters
hoping the war will wipe them all out
"

... is mercia an unreconstructed class-warrior, or just heartless?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Those chalk cliffs looked suspiciously like the Seven Sisters......

Yes; I wondered about this: not many chalk cliffs on the Yorkshire/Northumbrian coast?

But I loved the episode - the round dance of farce and tragedy is a joy to behold.

[Northender]

Nodded off during Episode 2 ... awoke to discover that I still really didn't care what happened to any of them... shan't bother with the remaining episodes (so there! )
Is anybody watching 'The Last Weekend' on ITV 1, by the way? I REALLY want to know whose funeral - literally - it turns out to be. The actor who played young Endeavour Morse is excellent as the 'unreliable narrator'.