Olivia Manning

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Olivia Manning is also the name of the wife of Archie Manning, mother of Cooper, Peyton, and Eli Manning.

Olivia Manning
Born	March 2, 1908 Portsmouth
Died	July 23, 1980 Isle of Wight
Nationality	British

Olivia Mary Manning (March 2, 1908 in Portsmouth – July 23, 1980 on the Isle of Wight) was a noted British novelist, best known for Fortunes of War, two linked trilogies (The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy) chronicling the wartime experiences of a group of English expatriates moving between Romania, Greece, Egypt and Palestine as World War II progresses.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Early career 3 Marriage and Romania 4 Greece and Egypt 5 Palestine 6 Post-war England 7 The Balkan Trilogy and other works 8 The Levant Trilogy 9 Final years 10 Works 11 References 12 Notes 13 External links

[edit] Early years

Manning was born in North End, Portsmouth on March 2, 1908. Her father, Oliver Manning, was a naval officer who rose from naval trainee to lieutenant-commander despite his lack of formal schooling. At the age of 45, while visiting the port of Belfast, he met Olivia Morrow, a publican's daughter fourteen years his junior; they married less than a month later in December 1904, in the Presbyterian church in her hometown of Bangor, County Down.^[1]

Manning adored her lively, handsome, womanizing father, who entertained others by singing Gilbert and Sullivan and reciting the poetry he had memorized during long sea voyages. ^[2] In contrast, her mother was bossy and domineering, with a "mind as rigid as cast-iron",^[3] and there were constant marital quarrels.^[4][5] The initially warm relationship between mother and daughter became strained after the birth of Manning's brother Oliver in 1913; delicate and frequently ill, he was the centre of his mother's attention, much to Manning's displeasure, who made several childish attempts to harm him.^[6] This unhappy, insecure childhood left a lasting mark on her work and personality.^[5][7]

Manning was educated privately at a small dame school before travelling to Northern Ireland in 1916, the first of several extended periods spent there while her father was at sea. In Bangor she attended the Bangor Presbyterian School, and while in Portsmouth Lyndon House School, and subsequently Portsmouth Grammar School, developing, as she recalled, "the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere".^[5][8] Schoolmates described her as shy and prone to tantrums; her tendency to tell boastful tall-tales about her family led to ostracism by her peers.^[9] Supported by her father, Manning read and wrote extensively, preferring novels, especially those by H. Rider Haggard. Her mother discouraged such pursuits, and confiscated material she thought unsuitable; when she found her daughter reading the Times Literary Supplement she scolded that "young men do not like women who read papers like that", and that Manning should focus on marketable job skills, such as typing.^[10]

Indeed, when financial circumstances forced Manning to leave school at sixteen, she went to work as a typist in professional offices, and spent some time as a junior in a beauty salon. A talented artist, she took evening classes at the Portsmouth Municipal School of Art, where a fellow student described her as intellectual and aloof.^[5][11] In May 1928, she had a painting selected for an exhibition at Southsea, and was subsequently offered a one woman show of her works. Manning seemed to be poised for a career as an artist, but she meanwhile she had continued her interest in literature, particularly modern literature, and at the age of twenty determined instead to be writer.^[12] Her artistic skills were to resurface in her writing in her intense descriptions of landscape.^[5]

[edit] Early career

Manning's first published works were three serialized detective novels, "Rose of Rubies", "Here is Murder" and "The Black Scarab" which appeared beginning in 1929 under the pseudonym Jacob Morrow in the Portsmouth News. Manning was only to acknowledge these books in the 1960s: a habitual liar about her age, the stories, printed when she was in her early twenties, might have given away the secret which she kept even from her husband. Between 1929 and 1935 she authored about 20 short stories, including a ghost story that was the first work to be published under her own name, though using initials to obscure her gender.^[13] Manning also wrote two novels, neither of which was accepted for publication. However, her second manuscript sufficiently impressed Edward Garnett, literary editor at Jonathan Cape that he asked his assistant Hamish Miles to write her a note of encouragement. Miles, a well-respected and connected literary advisor and translator in his late thirties, invited for Manning to visit if she were ever in London.^[14][15] Manning, feeling stifled in Portsmouth, ad already made efforts to move to the capital, but her meeting with Miles made her even more determined. She succeeded in obtaining a typing job at Peter Jones department store, and, despite opposition from her mother, moved into a run-down bedsitting room in Chelsea.^[5][16]

Manning was very short of money, with insufficient food and spending long hours writing after work.^[5][17] Miles took Manning under his wing, dazzling her with dinners, literary conversation and gossip, and giving her unaccustomed support. A married man with two children, he told Manning that his wife was an invalid and no longer able to tolerate sex; they soon became lovers. Manning later recalled that "sex for both of them was the motivating charm of life."^[18]

A case of mistaken identity involving an artist with a similar name led Manning to a better-paid job antiquing furniture, where she worked for more than two years, still writing in her spare time. She recalled this as "one of the happiest seasons" of her life.{cite} With Miles' encouragement she completed her first literary novel, The Wind Changes, and saw it published by Jonathan Cape in April 1937.^[17][19] The novel, set in Dublin in June 1921 during "The Troubles" and revolving around a woman torn between an Irish patriot and an English writer with pro-republican sympathies, was well received, with one reviewer commenting that "the novel shows unusual promise".^[5][20][21] Soon after, however, Miles learnt that he had an inoperable brain tumour, and disappeared from Manning's life. Since the affair had been kept secret she had difficulty obtaining information about him, and could not afford to visit him in the Edinburgh hospital where he lay dying. She lost her job at Peter Jones, moved into a well-paying job at the Medici Society, and was sacked when she refused her boss' order to give up novel-writing in the evening so as to conserve her energy for the day job.^[22] She obtained other work assessing new novels for their potential as films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but by the time she had saved sufficient money for a trip to Edinburgh, Miles was too ill to see her. He died in December 1937.^[15][23]

Miles did not normally introduce his literary friends to each other,^[24] but before his death he had been forced by circumstance to introduce Manning to the poet Stevie Smith. The two developed an immediate rapport^[17][21] and enjoyed exploring London's backstreets, with regular outings to museums, cinema, and visits to the Palmers Green home that Smith occupied with an eccentric aunt.^{[25] [26][27]} According to a mutual friend, Manning found there "an atmosphere of security and comfort which must have made her room in Oakley Street seem even chillier and more threadbare."^[26] The novelist and critic Walter Allen met Manning in 1937 and observed that she had a "devastating" wit "and was as formidable a young woman as any in London". Manning and Smith, he added, were a malicious pair of snobs.^[27]

[edit] Marriage and Romania

In July 1939, Walter Allen introduced Manning to the charming, ebullient Marxist R.D. Smith.^[27][28][29] Reggie was a large, untidy man possessed of a boundless energy and a constant desire for the company of others.^[30] The son of a Manchester toolmaker, he had studied at Birmingham University, where he had been coached by the left-wing poet Louis McNeice, and founded the Birmingham Socialist Society.^[31] According to the British intelligence organisation MI5, Smith had been recruited as a communist spy by Anthony Blunt on a visit to Cambridge University in 1938.^[32]

When he met Manning, Smith was on leave from his position as British Council lecturer in Romania. He had diligently prepared himself for the introduction to Manning by reading her works, and felt that her book The Wind Changes showed "signs of genius". He described Manning as a jolie laide, possessing lovely hair, hands, eyes and skin though an overlong nose, and fell in love at first sight. When he borrowed a half-crown from her on their first meeting, and repaid it the next day, he knew they would marry.^[29][33] Manning was less certain of the relationship, but Smith moved into her flat, proposing in bed a few weeks later. They were married at Marylebone Registry Office on August 18, 1939, with Stevie Smith and Louis McNeice as witnesses. The bridegroom, unconventionally and true to form, did not produce a ring for the ceremony.^[33][34][35] After the wedding the couple visited their parents and were about to go to Ireland to join McNeice and Ernest Stahl when they received word that Reggie had been recalled to Bucharest. They left within a matter of hours; Olivia later wrote to Stevie Smith from Romania asking her to find out what had happened to their flat and to take care of her books while she was away.^[35] The couple travelled by train to Bucharest, arriving on September 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany.^[36] They initially rented a flat, but later moved in with the diplomat Adam Watson, who was working with the British Legation.

Those who knew her at the time described her as a shy, provincial girl who had little experience with other cultures. She was both dazzled and appalled by Romanian society. The café society, with its wit and gossip, appealed to her, but she was repelled by the peasantry and the aggressive, often mutilated, beggars.^[37][38] She captured her Romanian experiences in the first two volumes of her Balkan Trilogy, The Great Fortune and The Spoilt City, which are considered one the most important literary treatments of the Romania during the war. In her novels, Manning described Bucharest as being on the margins of European civilization, "a strange, half-Oriental capital" that was "primitive, bug-ridden and brutal", whose citizens were peasants, whatever their wealth or status.^[38][39]

Manning spent her days writing; her main project was a book about Henry Morton Stanley and his search for Emin Pasha,^[40] but she also maintained an intimate correspondence with Stevie Smith, full of Bloomsbury gossip and intrigue.^[26][35] She undertook a dangerous journalistic assignment to interview former Romanian Prime Minister Iuliu Maniu in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania, a city that was at the time full of German military. Like many of her experiences, this incident was to be incorporated into a future work; others included her impromptu baptism of Reggie with cold tea because she feared being separated from him after death, and Reggie's production of a Shakespeare play, in which she was promised a prime role that was given away to another.^[41]

Reggie was relentlessly gregarious, and throughout his life, his warmth, wit and friendliness earned him many friends and drinking companions. In contrast, Manning was reticent and uncomfortable in social settings, and remained in the background.^[30][31][42] She acted, in her own words, as a "camp-follower", trailing after Reggie as he went from bar to bar, often choosing to go home early and alone. While Olivia remained faithful to Reggie during the war, their friend Ivor Porter was to report that Reggie had numerous affairs.^[43]

The approaching war and rise of fascism in Romania disconcerted and frightened Manning.^[44] The abdication of King Carol and the advance of the Germans in September 1940 increased her fears, and she repeatedly asked Reggie "But where will the Jews go?" Just before German troops entered Romania on October 7 at the invitation of the new dictator Ion Antonescu, Manning flew to Greece, followed a week later by Reggie.^[45]

[edit] Greece and Egypt

Manning was anxious and was prone to paranoia throughout her life. However, she had reason to be concerned about Reggie, who travelled from Romania to Greece on a German Lufthansa flight, whose planes were said sometimes to divert to Axis territory where Allied personnel were interned. He arrived safely, however, bringing a rucksack with some clothes and a suitcase full of books, but no appropriate clothes for work. While Reggie developed his usual hectic social life, Manning interacted little as she continued to work on her book and poetry. Nevertheless, this was a happy time; Manning reported that "Romania is abroad, but Greece is home". Manning had her admirers, including Terence Spencer, a British Council lecturer who acted as her companion while Reggie was busy with other activities; Spencer was to appear as the character Charles Warden in Friends and Heroes, the third book of the Balkan Trilogy. Soon after their arrival, Greece entered the war against the Axis.^[46] Despite early successes, by April 1941 the country was at risk of imminent invasion, and in a poem Manning later recalled the "horror and terror of defeat" of a country she had grown to love.^[47][48] The couple prepared again for departure, and on April 18 they left Piraeus for Egypt on the Erebus, the last civilian ship to leave Greece.^[49][50][51]

The Smiths travelled on the battered steamer with the novelist Robert Liddell and the Welsh poet Harold Edwards and their wives. The refugees had been told to bring provisions, but since there had been no food in Athens, they had nothing but oranges and wine for the three dangerous days of the passage across the Mediterranean. They shared a cramped cabin with the Edwardses and Mrs. Edwards' hat box full of expensive Parisian hats. Annoyed by the box, Manning kept placing it in the passageway outside the cabin, while Mrs. Edwards kept returning it. Not on speaking terms at the end of the voyage, Manning had the last word: when Mrs Edwards later opened her hatbox she found that Manning had crushed the hats with a chamberpot.^[52][53]

Arriving in Alexandria, they gratefully devoured the food provided by the British military, while learning that the swastika was now flying over the Acropolis.^[54] Manning's first impressions of Egypt were of squalor and unreality; she reported that "[f]or weeks we lived in a state of recoil", expecting their stay to be temporary.^[55] Arriving in Cairo, they spent their first night in a former brothel, then in a pension.^[56] Within a month they had renewed contact with Adam Watson, who was now Second Secretary at the British Embassy. He invited them to stay at his flat in the Garden City, overlooking the British Embassy.^[30][57] Cairo was rife with rumours and alarms about the German advance, with regular 'flaps', that made Manning jittery and fearful.^[56] She was also constantly anxious about illness, and was indeed frequently unwell. Concerned, Reggie suggested that it might be best if she returned to England, but she retorted "Wherever we go, we go together. If we return home, we both go. I won't have the war separating us. End of story."^[58] Manning had always been a patriotic Briton, confident of Allied success in the war. Her father had made her a firm believer in the British Empire and the benefits it had brought the world. In Egypt, however, she had to face the fact that British influence and occupation had never been popular.^[59]

Reggie quickly discovered the Anglo-Egyptian Union in Zamalek, where he drank and talked politics and poetry. As usual he was well-liked, and according to Lawrence Durrell often had a string of disreputable friends with him.^[60] Manning was much less popular, and Durrell described her as a "hook-nosed condor", whose critical manner was unappreciated by most of those who knew her.^[60][61] Manning was incensed that the British Council took so long to find a suitable job for Reggie, whom she considered one of their most brilliant teachers. She took her revenge by writing scurrilous verse about the Council's first representative C.F.A. Dundas, whom she also later immortalized as the ineffectual Colin Gracey in the Balkan and Levant trilogies.^[62][63] Her characters were associated with real people but she never drew precisely from life.^[64] The mocking portrait of the British Council lecturer Professor Lord Pinkrose, for example, was based loosely on Lord Dunsany, who was sent to occupy the Byron Chair of English at Athens University in 1940.^[65][66] Manning also resented that Amy Smart, wife of Walter Smart, and frequent patron of artists, poets and writers in Cairo, paid the couple so little attention,^[60][67] and later obtained subtle revenge in a similar way.^[68]

In October 1941, Reggie was finally offered a post as lecturer at Farouk University in Alexandria. The couple moved from Cairo to share a flat with Robert Liddell who was also teaching there. The Germans regularly bombed Alexandria, and the raids terrified Manning, who irritated by insisting that all three descend to the air raid shelter whenever the sirens wailed.^[59][69] Almost immediately after arriving in Alexandria came the devastating news of the death of her brother Oliver in a plane crash.^[60][70] The emotional upset this caused prevented her from writing novels for several years.^[5]

The raids became intolerable to Manning, and she soon moved back to Cairo, where in the winter of 1941 she became press attaché at the United States Legation.^[71][72] In her spare time she likely worked on Guests at the Marriage, an unpublished prototype for the "Balkan Trilogy", as well as short stories and poetry,^[71] some of which she sent to Stevie Smith in the hopes of getting them published.^[35][71][73] Over the years, Stevie had brooded over Manning's desertion of their friendship to marry Reggie,^[74] and around this time her jealousy took an overt form; she wrote a poem entitled "Murder" in 1942, in which a man stands beside a grave and admits "My hand brought Reggie Smith to this strait bed- Well, fare his soul well, fear not I the dead".^[75] In subsequent reprintings, the name Reggie Smith was replaced by "Filmer Smith", veiling the allusion, but Manning found out and was furious.^[74][75]

Manning became a regular contributor to two Middle East based literary magazines, "Desert Poets" and "Personal Landscapes", founded by Bernard Spencer, Lawrence Durrell, and Robin Fedden.^[76][77] The latter sought to explore the "personal landscapes" of writers undergoing 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."^[78] She described her interactions with these poets and writers in 'Poets in Exile' in Cyril Connelly's magazine "Horizon";^[79] her review, was much critiqued by the authors involved, included Durrell whose objected to Spencer's poetry being praised at his expense.^{[80] [81]}

In 1942, Reggie was appointed as Controller of English and Arabic Programming at the Palestine Broadcasting Service in Jerusalem; the job was to begin in the fall, but in early July, with the German troops rapidly advancing on Egypt, he persuaded Manning to go ahead to Jerusalem to "prepare the way".^[82][83]

[edit] Palestine

The couple were to spend three years in Jerusalem. On arrival, Manning approached the Palestine Post for a job, and was soon appointed a reviewer. As was often the case, her character attracted attention; the paper's editor described her as a "formidable lady".^[83][84] Between 1943 and 1944 she was press assistant at Jerusalem's Public Information office, and then moved to the same position at the British Council office in Jerusalem.^[5] She also continued to work on her book about Stanley and Emin Pasha, and took advantage of army drivers who were willing to give lifts to civilians to visit Palestine, Petra and Damascus, gathering material for future works.^[85]

In 1944, Manning became pregnant; the couple were overjoyed and Manning relaxed and became less critical of others, including her own mother, with whom she had long had a difficult relationship. She took up resting, walking, painting and even knitting. In the seventh month, however, the baby died in utero, and as was the practice of the era, Manning had to wait two difficult months to deliver her dead child. "I am like a walking cemetery", she often repeated.^[29][86] Grief-stricken, Manning became paranoid, constantly afraid that Reggie would be assassinated. Reggie determined that she was having a nervous breakdown, and in October 1944, took her to Cyprus for a difficult month's holiday. Returning to Jerusalem, she was still far from better, and the poet Louis Lawler noticed the discontent of this "strange and difficult woman". Olivia called Reggie "Smith" throughout this period, but despite the problems in their relationship, he was "wonderfully patient".^[87] Manning never fully recovered from the loss of her child, and was rarely to talk or write of it. She was unable to have further children and in the future transferred her maternal feelings towards animals and especially cats.^[29][88]

During her time in the Middle East, Manning had picked up amoebic dysentery, which led to several admissions to hospitals in Cairo and Palestine. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, her state of health led the couple to decide that she should return to England earlier than Reggie. They travelled to Suez together, where she sailed for home alone.^[89]

[edit] Post-war England

After a brief stay with her still grieving parents in heavily bombed Portsmouth, she moved back to a borrowed flat London. Reggie arrived home during the summer of 1945, and found a job in the Features Department of the BBC.^[90] In the following years, they rented flats in in Westminster, Shepherds Market, and Baker Street. Manning wrote scripts for the BBC, including adaptations of novels by George Eliot, Arnold Bennett and Ada Leverson.^[91] She also completed her book on Stanley and Emin Pasha, titled "The Remarkable Expedition" in the UK and "The Reluctant Rescue" in the US, which was published in 1947.^[92] The book received generally good reviews, but remains comparatively unknown.^[93] In 1948, her book of short stories, "Growing Up", was published, the title story a fictionalized account of her affair with Hamish Miles.^[94]

In 1951, Manning and Smith moved to a rented house in St. John's Wood. The couple rented rooms to lodgers who included Julian Mitchell and Tony Richardson.^[94] At parties, Reggie would regularly ask other women if they were interested in extramarital encounters, but Manning was at first more restrained. Post war, she claimed to have had affairs with both William Gerhardie and Henry Green, and pursued her lodger, Tony Richardson, though her advances were rebuffed.^[95] Jerry Slattery, her doctor, became her longterm lover; her affair came as a shock to Reggie, who felt he must have disappointed his wife. However, after a difficult start, Reggie adjusted and became close friends with Jerry; for many years the Smiths maintained a friendly relationship with Slatterys. Manning's adultery in some ways made it easier for Reggie to justify his own frequent affairs, including the longstanding relationship with Diana Robson, who was to become his second wife. Olivia never paid undue attention to his infidelities, usually responding, "you know what Reggie's like".^[96] The two never contemplated divorce, believing that marriage was a life-long commitment.^[5][97]

Manning's first post-war novel, "Artist Among the Missing" was published in 1949, and received mixed reviews.^[98] She also worked on an Irish travel book, "The Dreaming Shore" which drew on her Anglo-Irish upbringing, but proved "a millstone"; it required multiple expensive journeys to Ireland, for some of which she was accompanied by Slattery. Her book was notable for her view that Ireland would one day be united.^[99] She continued the series of publications with "A School for Love", published in 1951. The novel concerned a boy growing up in Palestine during the Second World War. Reggie, on whom she relied heavily for literary judgment, help and support, and who scrutinized every oeuvre, at this point boasted that "My Olivia is what might be called an established author".^[100] The novel was generally well-received, but faced the possibillity of a libel suit from Clarissa Graves, sister of Robert on whom Miss Bohun, one of the novel's characters, may have been based.^[101]

She supplemented her book writing with radio adaptations of classic novels for the BBC, reviewing for The Spectator, The Sunday Times, the Observer, Punch and others, as well as occasional contributions to the Palestine Post.^[102] Her fourth novel, "A Different Face" was published in 1953, and Manning admitted that it was her "least successful book". Set in a drab city based on Manning's hometown of Portsmouth, it chronicled the main character's attempts to leave his birthplace. The book was not well-reviewed, and as was frequently the case, Manning felt slighted, feeling that she did not get the reviews she deserved.^[103][104] Neurotic self-doubt and perfectionism made her difficult and easily offended,^[105] and she was very aware of younger writers outstripping her.^[106] One such author was Iris Murdoch, with whom she shared an interest in flying saucers and an uneasy friendship tinged with jealousy at the younger Murdoch's greater success.^[107] Manning knew that she was spiteful and should avoid it, but could not help herself,^[108] and criticized many writer friends behind their backs.^[109] However, she consistently praised and admired Ivy Compton-Burnett to whom she had been introduced in 1945, and whom she greatly valued as a friend.^[110] She complained about her publishers and her lack of recognition from her peers: Anthony Powell called her "the world's worst grumbler", and her publishers remembered that she was "never an easy author to handle."^[111] A friend gave her the nickname "Olivia Moaning", which was picked up by many friends, much to Manning's annoyance.^[112]

In 1955 Manning published The Doves of Venus, which drew on her experiences in London in the 1930s; the two friends, Ellie Parsons and Nancy Claypole, bore similarities to Manning and Stevie Smith.^{[17][113][114]} In the book, an isolated Ellie seeks to escape a stultifying mother.^[115] The reviews were generally favourable, but Manning was not satisfied. Perhaps annoyed at her depiction in the novel, Stevie Smith wrote what Manning described as a "bitchy review"; the two great friends barely spoke thereafter, despite Smith's efforts at creating a rapprochement. Eventually, however, Manning grudgingly forgave her: when she learnt of Smith's final illness, she remarked that "Well, if she's really ill, we'll have to let bygones be bygones."^{[106][114][116]}

Manning channelled her unfulfilled maternal feelings into animals, and especially Siamese cats of which she was especially fond. She was very concerned about the health and comfort of her pets, taking them on visits to friends, along with hot water bottles for her pets in case the temperature dropped. She frequently fired her vets, telling one "I do not pay you to tell me that there is nothing wrong with my animal", and instead trying animal faith healers. At a larger level, she supported organizations against animal cruelty. Her love and interest in cats was illustrated in her book "Extraordinary Cats" published in 1967.^[117]

In December 1956, Manning published "My Husband Cartwright", a series of twelve sketches about Reggie that had originally appeared in Punch. It was not widely reviewed, and Manning was disappointed as usual. The book was to be a precursor of her portrait of her husband in "The Fortunes of War", detailing comic episodes witnessing to Reggie's character, including his gregarious nature and interest in social issues: "My husband Cartwright is a lover of his fellow-men. Lovers of their fellow-men can be maddening [...] While lecturing abroad he suddenly conceived a resentment of 'sights' especially 'useless' sights, such as ruins or tombs. You might suppose that were in not for such distractions as Tiberias, the Valley of the Kings or Hadrian's Villa, tourists abroad would occupy themselves solely in alleviating poverty."^[118]

[edit] 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; in her project she was supported and encouraged as usual by Reggie.^[119] The books described the development in the marriage of Harriet and Guy Pringle as they worked and lived in Romania and Greece during World War II before escaping to Alexandria in 1941. Early versions were written in the first person, but by the time of the final draft, the narratives were in the third person, each, however, as Manning said, a long chapter in an autobiography. There were differences, however. While Manning had been 31, and Reggie 25 at the outset of war, Manning's alter ego Harriet Pringle was a mere twenty-one, and her husband a year older. Manning was a writer by profession, while Harriet is an observer and a survivor.^[120] Nevertheless, the trilogy analyses the marriage as it moves from passion to acceptance of difference; a portrait of a man at once admirable and unsatisfactory, and a woman who alternately proud and impatient, but never bored.^[121]

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 and lack of self-confidence.^[122]

Following the publication of the final volume of the Balkan Trilogy in 1965, she worked on her cat memoir and a collection of short stories, A Romantic Hero and Other Stories, both of which were published in 1967.^[123] Another novel, The Play Room, (published as The Camperlea Girls in the US) was published in 1969. Both the book of short stories and the Play Room contained homosexual themes, a topic which interested Manning. The latter was a less than successful exploration of the lives and interests of modern adolescents, though the reviews were generally encouraging.^[124] A film version was proposed, and Ken Annakin asked her to write the script. The movie, with more explicit gay scenes than the book, was all but made before the money ran out; later a second version, with a second, very different, script, was 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", though in keeping with her obfuscations about her age, she was actually sixty-two.^[125]

[edit] The Levant Trilogy

The new decade brought a number of changes to the Smith household: Reggie took early retirement from the BBC and in 1972 was appointed as a lecturer at the New University of Ulster in Coleraine. Though she found Reggie's absence difficult, Manning had no intention moving to Ireland with him, and so the couple were parted for part of the next few years. Needing only smaller flat, they downsized to an apartment nearby.^[126]

Manning was always close observer of life, and gifted with a photographic memory.^[29] She told her friend Kay Dick that "I write out of experience, I have no fantasy. I don't think anything I've experienced has ever been wasted.^[71] However, her 1974 novel, The Rain Forest showed her creative skills as she described a fictional island in the Indian Ocean and its inhabitants. Set in 1953, the novel's central characters are a British couple and the book examines their personal experiences and tragedies against a background of a violent end to colonial British rule.^[127] The book is one of Manning's lesser-known books, for which Manning blamed her publishers.^[128] Despite her hopes, the book was not shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and she suspected a plot against her.^[129] However, she was delighted when Antonia Fraser picked the radio adaptation of the Balkan trilogy as the best radio feature of 1974.^[130]

Early in 1975 she began The Danger Tree; for some time she described it as "The Fourth Part of the Balkan Trilogy", but it became the first novel in the Levant Trilogy, continuing the story of Harriet and Guy Pringle in Egypt and the Middle East. The book proved "a long struggle" to write, in part because she lacked confidence in her ability to invent material: the book included the story of a young officer, Simon Boulderstone, and his Desert War in juxtaposition with the more secure lives of the Pringles and their circle. Manning, fascinated by sibling relationships, and remembering the death of her own brother, also examined the relationship between Simon and his elder brother, Hugo. She felt inadequate in her ability to write about soldiers and military scenes; initial reviewers initially agreed, finding them unconvincing and improbable, but subsequent reviewers have been considerably kinder.^[131]

While Manning required inventiveness for some parts of the book, she also made use of real-life incidents. The opening chapter of The Danger Tree describes the accidental death of the young son of Sir Desmond and Lady Hooper. The incident was based on fact: Sir Walter and Lady Amy Smart's eight-year-old boy was killed when he picked up a stick bomb in the desert while on a picnic in January 1943. Just as described in the novel, his grief-stricken parents had tried to feed the dead boy through a hole in his cheek.^[64][67] Manning had been irritated at the Smarts for not including her and Reggie into their artistic circle, but the inclusion of this scene was considered in poor taste by several friends, who were also outraged that the quiet and faithful Lady Smart would be associated with Manning's very different Lady Hooper.^[67][68] Though both Sir Walter and his wife had died by the time of publication, Manning's publisher received a solicitor's letter written on behalf of the Smart family, protesting the scene and requiring that there should be no further reference to the incident or to the couple in future volumes. Manning ignored both requests.^[67] She also based the character of Aidan Pratt on the actor, writer and poet Stephen Haggard,^[132] whom she had known in Jerusalem. Like Pratt, Haggard committed suicide on a train from Cairo to Palestine, but in Haggard's case it followed the end of a relationship with a beautiful Egyptian woman, rather than unrequited homosexual love.^[133] The Danger Tree was a considerable critical success, and though not shortlisted for the Booker prize, the Yorkshire Post selected it as their Best Novel of 1977.^[134]

Manning found battle scenes easier to write in the second volume of the trilogy, The Battle Lost and Won, with Bernard Montgomery's "Memoirs" as her guide. The novel followed the Pringles as Rommel and the Afrika Korps approached Alexandria, where Guy was teaching, while Cairo remained a place of privileged and sexual exchange for the non-combattants, and the Pringles' marriage slowly disintegrated. ^[135] Manning opened the book with an account of a visit to the Berka, contrasting rich and poor, voyeurs and observed. After a slow start, Manning wrote with certainty and speed, and the book was created in a record seven months, and was published in 1978.^[136]

[edit] Final years

Manning was deeply affected by the sudden death of Jerry Slattery in November 1977. He had been her lover and confidante for more than a quarter of a century,^[137] and for several years she often wished she did not have to wake up.^[138] Manning's last years were made also made difficult by physical deterioration; writing became more difficult as arthritis increasingly affected her right arm and hand, for which she required surgery in 1974;^[139] she had hip replacement surgery in 1976 and in 1979; and she was in generally poor health with ongoing problems from the amoebic dysentery caught in the Middle East that had never left her.^[140] Nevertheless, she began work of the final novel in the Levant Trilogy "The Sum of Things", in which Harriet agrees to sail home to the UK, but having said goodbye to Guy, changes her mind. The novel follows Harriet's travels in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, observes Guy's supposed widowerhood in Cairo after he learns of the sinking of Harriet's ship, and follows Simon Boulderstone's injury and recovery.^[141]

The Sum of Things was published posthumously, for on July 4, 1980 Manning suffered a severe stroke while visiting friends in the Isle of Wight. She died in hospital on July 23; somewhat typically, Reggie, having arrived from Ireland, was not present when she died, as 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 Reggie would be late even for her funeral, and he almost was. In addition, his mourning period, characterized 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.^[5][142]

Manning had long complained about the lack of recognition she had received as a writer, and was not consoled by Reggie and her friends that her talent would be recognized, and her works read for years to come. "I want to be really famous now, Now", she retorted.^[7][143] In the event, her renown and readership developed substantially after her death; a television serialization of the Fortunes of War starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh finally came to fruition in 1987, bringing her work to a wider audience.^[7][144]

[edit] Works

• Rose of Rubies (1929) -as Jacob Morrow
• Here is Murder (1929) -as Jacob Morrow
• The Black Scarab (1929) -as Jacob Morrow
• The Wind Changes (1937)
• Remarkable Expedition: Story of Stanley's Rescue of Emin Pasha from Equatorial Africa (1947)
• Growing Up (1948)
• Artist Among the Missing (1949)
• The Dreaming Shore (1950)
• School of Love (1951)
• A Different Face (1953)
• My Husband Cartwright (1956)
• The Doves of Venus (1960)
• The Great Fortune (Balkan Trilogy -1960)
• The Spoilt City (Balkan Trilogy -1962)
• The Crimson Dawn (1963)
• Friends and Heroes (Balkan Trilogy -1965)
• Extraordinary Cats (1967)
• A Romantic Hero, and other stories (1967)
• The Play Room (The Camperlea Girls in the US) (1969)
• The Rain Forest (1974)
• The Danger Tree (Levant Trilogy -1977)
• The Battle Lost and Won (Levant Trilogy -1978)
• The Sum of Things (Levant Trilogy -1980)
• The Weather in the Streets (1986)

[edit] References

• Bowen, Roger (1995), Many Histories Deep: The Personal Landscape Poets in Egypt, 1940-45, Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, ISBN 9780838635674, OCLC 231653288 .
• Braybrooke, Neville; Braybrooke, June (2004), Olivia Manning: A Life, London: Chatto and Windus, ISBN 9780701177492, OCLC 182661935 .
• Cooper, Artemis (1989), Cairo in the War, 1939-1945, London: Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 9780241132807, OCLC 29519769 .
• Lassner, Phyllis (2004), Colonial strangers: Women writing the end of the British empire, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, ISBN 9780813536415, OCLC 56835050 .
• Steinberg, Theodore L. (2005), Twentieth-Century Epic Novels, Newark: University of Delaware Press, ISBN 9780874138894, OCLC 230671138 .
• Stevenson, Randall (1993), A reader's guide to the twentieth century novel in Britain, Lexington, Ky.: Univ. Press of Kentucky, ISBN 9780813108230, OCLC 231578061 .
• Spalding, Frances (1988), Stevie Smith: a critical biography, London: Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-15207-4, OCLC 19846479 .

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Philip Hensher (October 30, 2004). "The lady's not for exhuming OLIVIA MANNING by Neville and June Braybrooke". The Spectator. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-884476481.html. 

Persondata
NAME	Manning, Olivia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	novelist
DATE OF BIRTH	March 2, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH	Portsmouth. England
DATE OF DEATH	July 23, 1980
PLACE OF DEATH	Isle of Wight, England