Olivia Manning - The Balkan Trilogy and Other Works

The Balkan Trilogy and Other Works

Between 1956 and 1964 Manning's main project was The Balkan Trilogy, a sequence of three novels based on her experiences during the Second World War; as usual she was supported and encouraged by Reggie. The books describe the marriage of Harriet and Guy Pringle as they live and work in Romania and Greece, ending with their escape to Alexandria in 1941 just ahead of the Germans. Guy, a man at once admirable and unsatisfactory, and Harriet, a woman alternately proud and impatient, move from early passion to acceptance of difference. Manning described the books as long chapters of an autobiography, and early versions were written in the first person. There was significant fictionalisation, however. While Manning had been 31 and Reggie 25 at the outset of war, Manning's alter ego Harriet Pringle was a mere 21, and her husband a year older. Manning was a writer by profession, while her creation was not.

The first book in the trilogy, The Great Fortune, received mixed reviews, but subsequent volumes, The Spoilt City and Friends and Heroes were generally well-received; Anthony Burgess announced that Manning was "among the most accomplished of our women novelists" and comparisons were made to Lawrence Durrell, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell. There were a few carping voices, and as usual, they ignited Manning's ire.

Following the publication of the final volume of The Balkan Trilogy in 1965, Manning worked on her cat memoir and a collection of short stories, A Romantic Hero and Other Stories, both of which were published in 1967. Another novel, The Play Room (published as The Camperlea Girls in the US), appeared in 1969. The book of short stories and The Play Room both contained homosexual themes, a topic which interested Manning. The latter was a less than successful exploration of the lives and interests of adolescents, though the reviews were generally encouraging. A film version was proposed, and Ken Annakin asked her to write the script. The movie, with more explicit lesbian scenes than the book, was all but made before the money ran out; a second version, with a very different script, was also developed but came to nothing. "Everything fizzled out", she said. "I wasted a lot of time and that is something which you cannot afford to do when you are sixty"; in keeping with her obfuscations about her age, she was actually sixty-two.