‘This is the saddest story I have ever heardâ€: so begins John Dowell, the unreliable narrator of this dark and intriguing tale of two disintegrating marriages – his own and that of the ‘good soldierâ€, Capt Edward Ashburnham. Set in the years before the First World War, and published in 1915, The Good Soldier is acknowledged as one of finest novels of the 20th century.