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BackgroundMany studies on pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (PIMS-TS) have described abdominal findings as part of multisystem involvement, with limited descriptions of abdominal imaging findings specific to PIMS-TS.ObjectiveTo perform a detailed evaluation of abdominal imaging findings in children with PIMS-TS.Materials and methodsWe performed a single-center retrospective study of children admitted to our institution between April 2020 and January 2021 who fulfilled Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health criteria for PIMS-TS and who had cross-sectional abdominal imaging. We studied clinical data, abdominal imaging, laboratory markers, echocardiography findings, treatment and outcomes for these children. We also reviewed the literature on similar studies.ResultsDuring the study period, 60 PIMS-TS cases were admitted, of whom 23 required abdominal imaging. Most (74%) were from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background and they had an average age of 7 years (range 2–14 years). All children had fever and gastrointestinal symptoms on presentation with elevated C-reactive protein, D-dimer and fibrinogen. Most had lymphopenia, raised ferritin and hypoalbuminemia, with positive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 immunoglobulin G antibodies in 65%. Free fluid (78%), right iliac fossa mesenteric inflammation (52%), and significantly enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes (52%) were the most common imaging findings. Appendiceal inflammation (30%) and abnormal distal ileum and cecum/ascending colon wall thickening (35%) were also common. All children responded well to medical management alone, with no mortality.ConclusionIn addition to free fluid, prominent lymphadenopathy, and inflammatory changes in the right iliac fossa, we found abnormal long-segment ileal thickening and appendicitis to be frequent findings. Recognition of appendiceal involvement as a component of the PIMS-TS spectrum should help clinicians avoid unnecessary surgical intervention as part of a multidisciplinary team approach.

While much discussion of The Good Soldier has focused on the question of its genre, little attention has been paid to what I describe as Dowell's 'melodramatic imagination'. This chapter argues for the recognition of melodrama as an important aspect of the novel's generic fabric. As critics such as Peter Brooks and Ben Singer underscore, melodrama is an acutely modern form, having emerged in the aftermath of the French Revolution and being marked by the tendency to articulate whilst simultaneously mitigating the uncertainties and contradictions of modernity. In emphasising the significance of Dowell's melodramatic imagination, I compare The Good Soldier to Ford's Mr. Fleight (1913) which also draws heavily on melodrama's dramatic apparatus. For Dowell, I argue that the melodramatic mode becomes a powerful narrative resource, allowing him to negotiate a series of apparently incomprehensible events by adopting a form that circumvents the necessity to make sense.

In July 1932, Ford described his latest novel as 'the beginning of a trilogy that is meant to do for the post-war world and the Crisis what the Tietjens tetralogy did for the war'. Although Ford never completed the intended trilogy, The Rash Act was published in 1933 and was followed by a sequel, Henry for Hugh, in 1934. However, in his introduction to the 1982 Carcanet edition of The Rash Act, C. H. Sisson asserts that 'the Crisis is of no more than incidental importance' in the novel. This essay argues that, on the contrary, the financial crisis is of crucial significance in The Rash Act and Henry for Hugh, and that there is an issue which binds together the novels' formal, structural, historical and thematic aspects, and which underpins the concern with economic crisis: that of trust. It is no coincideence that Ford chose his beloved Provence as the staging post for the regeneration of trust that was necessary in the aftermath of the Great Crash.

This essay examines the tension between visuality and temporality in Ford's historical fiction. Critics have often noted the visual intensity of the Tudor trilogy. The Impressionist aim of 'superimposing' scenes - of rendering the effect of 'so many views seen through bright glass' - would seem to complement the negation of temporal distance. In Ladies Whose Bright Eyes the possibility 'that the ages superimposed themselves one over the other' further emphasises the interrelatedness of the aims of Impressionism and historical fiction. However, we must be wary of the straightforward conclusion that Ford rejects temporality in favour of visuality, particularly if we consider his texts in relation to the idea of plot. Hugh Kenner argues that Ford's narratives 'do away with plot', since the '\"story\" is broken up into a number of scenes, conversations, impressions, etc.' which are 'freely juxtaposed for maximum intensity'. Yet, while Ford's plots are destabilised by the visual aspects of his Impressionism, the texts are dependent on plotting, as both scheming and narrating. Rather than offering a simple resolution, the tension between visuality and temporality is regarded as a compelling source of vitality within Ford's writing.

This essay reconsiders Ford's approach to characterisation in the light of Alex Woloch's recent work on the nineteenth-century realist novel which envisions character as equally implicated in the analysis of novelistic form as of content. In doing so, it challenges the charge of 'extreme realism' - which Michael Levenson levels at Ford's handling of character - and argues that Ford is more radical in this aspect of his writing than has often been acknowledged. In particular, Ford's commitment to 'justification' in A Call and The Good Soldier turns out to be an anti-realist gesture in its rejection of the 'one vs. many' structure identified by Woloch. Furthermore, while the abandonment of the realist 'character-system' destabilises Ford's texts, it also foregrounds his characters' literariness - their very construction as 'personalities of paper' - people made of words printed on the page.

(There is of course a certain cachet - if not an industry - attached to the idea of the 'neglected classic' and claiming that the text you're about to champion has been mistreated and undervalued by the literary establishment, the scholarly community, and/or culture at large has often proved a useful rhetorical strategy.) As Max Saunders argues: 'Rumours of Ford's neglect have been exaggerated', and it is, perhaps, for this reason that Robert McDonough can quip: 'Ford is perhaps best known for not being as well known as he deserves to be'.5 In fact, the four novels that comprise Parade's End were Ford's greatest commercial successes in their day, especially in America, and they have remained in print more or less consistently since they were reissued as orange Penguins in 1948, and Alfred A. Knopfs single-volume edition appeared in 1950.6 Nevertheless, there is a significant sense in which the dual claims of obscurity and centrality, of difficulty and popularity, or of modernist experimentalism and First World War historical documentary (with the novelist 'in his really proud position as historian of his own time') can be regarded as emerging from the extraordinary and often contradictory qualities of Ford's 'immense novel'.7 In other words, the fact that the tetralogy can be experienced as accessible and engaging and difficult, baffling, and confusing - or as romance, realist, impressionist, and Vorticist - all at once tells us something important about the bewildering complexity of Ford's achievement. The edition was also notable for having returned the tetralogy to its original four-volume format. Since the 1950 single-volume Knopf edition, which was the first to use the title Parade 's End, and which was the basis for later reissues by Viking, Penguin, and Carcanet Press, the majority of readers have encountered and have tended to regard the text(s) as a single entity. The first episode gave BBC2 its best viewing figures for drama for seven years and the series was acclaimed by critics.16 In a piece for the OUPblog, Saunders praised the 'extraordinary job' Stoppard and White had done 'in transforming [Ford's] rich and complex text into a dramatic line that is at once lucid and moving'.17 My intention here, however, is not to assess the merits of the adaptation itself but to highlight the role it played in bringing new readers to Ford's novel and in reigniting and refocusing debates within the scholarly community already familiar with the source text. [...]John Benjamin Murphy draws together the concerns of the section with his identification, in Parade's End, of a 'pantomimic mode' through which various cultural identities are performed and parodied.