PARADE’S END

SUPERB LITERARY ADAPTATION

This spacious, handsome adaptation of a quartet of novels by Ford Madox Ford gets off to a hugely impressive start. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a mesmerising performance as Christopher Tietjens, a Yorkshire squire and the ‘cleverest young man in London’, encompassing all the tensions and contradictions in his complex character.

Rebecca Hall is equally compelling as his impossible wife Sylvia, who is amoral, sexually voracious, and bent on tormenting her husband (both left). Put all that against the backdrop of the First World War, and it’s not going to end well… Hall and Cumberbatch are just two of the stars in a lavish production that also includes Miranda Richardson and

Rupert Everett, and Tom Stoppard’s script is wonderfully true to the spirit of Ford’s masterpiece.