Christopher Tietjens, last Tory, tries to maintain his principles through World War I and its aftermath, while his wife betrays him and the world he represents crumbles. Ford wrote this as four novels, now usually published together, and the prose shifts through time and perspective with modernist complexity. Tietjens suffers without complaining; the war destroys everything he valued. Ford served on the front lines; his portrait of combat is harrowing and exact. The series has been called the best novel about World War I. The old England dies. Something else is born in the trenches.