When the first book opens there’s a battle campaign in full tilt. In fact there are two. One is on the grand scale and affecting more lives than can be imagined. The other is so small it’s scarcely noticed. Except by Harriet Pringle. Because while her private campaign still wearies on, it’s obvious to her as much as to the reader, that it’s already lost. Lost on the day she tossed away the idea of making her own life, met a man whose temperament is a world apart from her own, married on a whim and followed him into a series of war zones. The war had abandoned them, leaving them in a vacuum that had been filled by everyday worries. But everyday worries were not enough. They had to invent excitements to make life bearable." I wonder if Manning has an autobiography or a memoir, if so, I would simply love to devour it. I can't get enough of this stuff and I'm fairly certain that Guy and Harriet are based off of Manning and her husband... The Smiths initially rented a flat, but later moved in with the diplomat Adam Watson, who was working with the British Legation. [43] Those who knew Manning at the time described her as a shy, provincial girl who had little experience with other cultures. She was both dazzled and appalled by Romania. The café society, with its wit and gossip, appealed to her, but she was repelled by the peasantry and the aggressive, often mutilated, beggars. [44] [45] Her Romanian experiences were captured in the first two volumes of The Balkan Trilogy ( The Great Fortune and The Spoilt City), considered one of the most important literary treatments of Romania during the war. In her novels, Manning described Bucharest as being on the margins of European civilisation, "a strange, half-Oriental capital" that was "primitive, bug-ridden and brutal", whose citizens were peasants, whatever their wealth or status. [45] [46] Soldiers marching in Bucharest, 1941

Spalding, Frances (1988), Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-15207-4, OCLC 19846479 . She wanted a large, comfortable man as friend and companion, like Guy, but without his intolerable gregariousness."A fantastically tart and readable account of life in eastern Europe at the start of the war' Sarah Waters a b c d Macintyre, Ben; Pavia, Will (3 March 2007), "The bumbling British hero who was a Communist 'spy' ", The Times Bella Niculescu, a condescending but sometimes helpful friend of Harriet's. A wealthy British expatriate who has married a Bucharest native, Nikko. Patten, Eve (2012), Imperial Refugee: Olivia Manning's fictions of war, Cork University Press, ISBN 978-1-85918-482-0, OCLC 766340331 .

The Sum of Things was published posthumously, for on 4 July 1980 Manning suffered a severe stroke while visiting friends in the Isle of Wight. She died in hospital in Ryde on 23 July; somewhat typically, Smith, having been recalled from Ireland, was not present when she died. [3] [157] He could not bear to see her "fade away" and had gone to London to keep himself busy. Manning had long predicted that the frequently tardy Smith would be late for her funeral, and he almost was. His mourning period, characterised by abrupt transitions from weeping to almost hysterical mirth, was precisely how Manning had imagined Guy Pringle's reaction to Harriet's supposed death in The Sum of Things. Manning was cremated and her ashes buried at Billingham Manor on the Isle of Wight. [3] [158] This prescription was so well filled by the Olivia Manning Balkan and Levant trilogies. I have such a warm feeling in my chest after having finished the six volumes. Manning introduced me to a full range of human types, people I loved and hated as the clouds of war chased them across southern Europe and on to the Middle East. This was a part of World War II that I had not paid a great deal of attention to. And along that plane, incidentally, I learned a lot. There was so much. Sugg, Richard P. (1992), Jungian literary criticism, Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, p.161, ISBN 0-8101-1017-2 Many of the poets out here are refugees: all are exiles,” she wrote in Egypt, one of her temporary homes. “That sense of a missed experience, that no alternative experience can dispel, haunts most of us.” Meanwhile, those recently uprooted by the Ukrainian war (I count myself among them) who have escaped the worst that war can throw at them—the destruction of home, health, the loss of limbs, family or friends—may take cold comfort from a moment of unaccustomed optimism from Manning in book four. To a friend bemoaning the loss of a glittering career the war has perhaps permanently truncated, Harriet replies philosophically: “We’re all displaced persons these days. Guy and I have accumulated more memories of loss and flight in two years than we could in a whole lifetime of peace. And, as you say, it’s not over yet. But we’re seeing the world. We might as well try and enjoy it.”Were this just the portrait of a marriage, it would be wearisome—the Pringles finish the sequence of novels in no healthier a state than they start them. Yet the story also provides a meticulous account of war from a non-combatant’s point of view. What interests Manning, in critic Harry J. Mooney’s words, is “the chaos” that such large events “impose on private life.” Throughout, escalating fear and mayhem slowly tighten their grip around the characters, although few really understand what is happening to them. Reality is glimpsed through gossip in the English bar of the Athenee Palace (a hotel which still stands, albeit now as a Hilton), the changing tone of the news-films at the cinema, and the jokes which could be made yesterday but are perilous to tell today. The 1970s brought a number of changes to the household: the couple moved to a smaller apartment following Smith's early retirement from the BBC and 1972 appointment as a lecturer at the New University of Ulster in Coleraine. The couple subsequently lived apart for long periods, as Manning rejected the idea of moving to Ireland. [140] In 1974 Manning adapted two of Arnold Bennett's works ( The Card and The Regent) into an eight part BBC Radio play: Denry - The Adventures Of A Card. Graham Armitage portrayed the eponymous Denry with Ursula O'Leary as the beautiful Countess of Chell. [141] This is unjust. Fortunes is a triumph, fusing fiction with diligently researched fact to portray a disparate group of expatriates surviving under threat of invasion: their stoicism, heroism and cowardice; their fleeting romances and petty intrigues. The prose is economical and the gaze sceptical and unsentimental. Added to this tapestry is a rich evocation of contemporary society, place and manners. Anthony Burgess called the sequence the ‘finest fictional record of the war produced by a British writer’. During her time in Egypt, Manning became a contributor to two Middle East-based literary magazines, "Desert Poets" and "Personal Landscapes", founded by Bernard Spencer, Lawrence Durrell and Robin Fedden. [84] [85] The last sought to explore the "personal landscapes" of writers experiencing exile during the war. The founders, like Manning, maintained a strong attachment to Greece rather than an artistic and intellectual engagement with Egypt. In remembering the departure from Greece Manning wrote "We faced the sea / Knowing until the day of our return we would be / Exiles from a country not our own." [86] [87] During their time in Egypt and Palestine Manning and her husband maintained close links with refugee Greek writers, including translating and editing the work of George Seferis and Elie Papadimitriou. [87] Manning described her impressions of the Cairo poetry scene in "Poets in Exile" in Cyril Connolly's magazine Horizon. She defended the writers from the claim of a London reviewer that they were "out of touch", suggesting that their work was strengthened by their access to other cultures, languages and writers. [87] [88] Her review was much critiqued by those featured, including Durrell, who objected to Spencer's poetry being praised at his expense. [88] [89]