Today in 2021 in the midst of a global pandemic, I'm thrilled to see the publication of beautiful new editions of Olivia Manning's World War Two trilogy,
The Great Fortune, The Spoilt City, and
Friends and Heroes,
known collectively as
The Balkan Trilogy. I'm enchanted by the new-but-retro, mysterious cover images, because much as I love Ken and Em in the original BBC production of The Fortunes of War (based on
The Balkan Trilogy
and The Levant Trilogy) the time had come to update this image of Olivia Manning's modern classics.
What makes them modern classics? What is so special about these books, written in the 1960s, depicting people from a period twenty years earlier?
For a start, their tense atmosphere is uncannily analogous of today’s lockdown. Guy and Harriet Pringle live their lives against the backdrop of an outer threat, in their case military occupation, in ours an infectious epidemic. Somehow, it's both gripping and comforting to be reminded through their story that the world has met many crises and throughout them people have to find ways to carry on.
The series is unique because while more than one British woman has written about living through World War Two, it has usually been done from the comparative safety of the island 'Home Front', whereas Manning was physically present at the centre of a politically volatile, war-torn Europe, fleeing in turn from Bucharest, Athens, Palestine, and Cairo, to escape the remorseless advance of enemy armies.
Manning's books also resonate in 2021 as Britain faces up to the embarrassing legacies of its colonialism. Manning lived amongst the British overseas community, casting a caustic eye and a tart tongue over the colonial mindset she saw around her. 'What have we ever done for Egypt,' asks one shamefaced Briton, 'except make money out of it? The poor here are just as poor and miserable as they were before the British took over.'
On a personal psychological note, in Harriet and Guy's marriage we see a realistic portrayal of the relationships we hang onto: long-lasting but inevitably caught up in the clash of the private needs of the individual and the public demands of time and circumstance.
Author: Olivia Manning
Imprint: Windmill Books (part of Penguin Random House)
Published: 30/07/2020 ('The Great Fortune')
Published: 11/02/2021 ('The Spoilt City')
Published: 11/02/2021 ('Friends and Heroes')
