Privy Seal — Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was an English novelist and publisher. Born Ford Hermann Hueffer, he finally settled on the name Ford Madox Ford in honour of his grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown, of whom he wrote a biography. Ford wrote dozens of novels as well as essays, poetry, memoirs and literary criticism, and collaborated with Joseph Conrad on three novels, The Inheritors (1901), Romance (1903) and The Nature of Crime (1924). He also wrote the tetralogy Parade's End (1924-28). His novel The Good Soldier (1915) is his most famous work. Set just before World War I it chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two supposedly “perfect couples” using intricate flashbacks (a literary technique pioneered by Ford).