No Enemy

At the Gingerbread Cottage, a shabby little refuge of earth, thrift, and stubborn charm, Gringoire entertains friends while cooking, gardening, and talking his way through a life reshaped by war. Ford Madox Ford's narrator presents him as a former poet and veteran whose real art is survival: turning scraps into meals, labor into beauty, and poverty into dignity. What begins as a comic, affectionate portrait becomes a study of how a sensitive man rebuilds himself after catastrophe. Gringoire's monologues range from mock-recipes and domestic economy to sharper reflections on the First World War, when landscapes lost their innocence and even familiar fields seemed vulnerable to violation. He remembers rare moments when beauty broke through the fog of conflict—a hidden valley, Kensington Gardens, a nightingale, a cricket field—only to be shadowed again by ruin, duty, and grief. Alongside satire of military training and government bureaucracy, the book offers a tender, ironic meditation on patriotism, memory, and the extraordinary resilience hidden in ordinary life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.