Fortunes of War: The Levant Trilogy

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Simon Boulderstone, a young officer who encounters Harriet on first arriving in Egypt, and who is wounded at the Second Battle of El Alamein. 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. Manning's Balkan Trilogy is a very interesting look at a side of World War Two that I don't often encounter, that fought in eastern Europe. It mirrors some of her life experiences and is followed by The Levant Trilogy which I definitely plan to read also. As always, Harriet is in the unenviable position of seeing Guy always admired, and used, by his many friends; while he gives his attentions to his students, his friends and his acquaintances, but never to her. She feels ill-used, neglected and at a loss of how to help, making excuses for her husband, while the war continues to cause chaos around her. Simon Boulderstone is a good new character, whose attempts to find his unit, his struggles with the life of the army, and the sheer confusion of war, open up a new vista to these books, in showing us the men who are fighting, as well as the civilians who are coping with the encroaching war. The Spoilt City,” is the second volume in Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy. The uncertainty surrounding Romania in the first novel is even more pronounced at the beginning of this book. Rumours and suspicions abound and the English are viewed as likely losers of the war. Harriet begins to long for safety, but Guy refuses to accept that he will have to leave and, to Harriet’s exasperation, throws himself wholeheartedly into organising the summer school at the University.

Dubedat, an English elementary school teacher and bohemian pacifist 'simple lifer', who was hitchhiking his way around the Balkans when war broke out. Working class and a scouser. We can't leave the Russian/Irish prince behind, from the goodness of our hearts, even though he betrayed us to the Gestapo." Of all the hangers-on that Guy surrounds himself with, Manning devotes the most space to Yakimov an Englishman with Russian émigré parents. Yakimov enjoys the high life. He takes a mistress who can support him in the manner that he enjoys. When the mistress dies, he falls into poverty. Guy decides to support him and to horror of Harriet invites him to live in their apartment. When they decide to hide a Jew in the loft they are forced to go to great lengths to hide his presence from Yakimov who they fear might denounce him to the police. Yakimov never denounces the Jew but accidentally tips off the police that Guy is a communist. Yakimov is a dominating presence in the trilogy. When he is finally killed, the reader is happy enough to see the end of him.And now let’s talk about what actually impressed me about this book. I myself am Romanian. I was raised in Bucharest. Manning managed to teach me a lesson about my own city – and that I am ever grateful for. She uses actual Romanian words to paint the picture authentically; she describes the beggars and poverty I am so accustomed to, but in a way only a foreigner could; she talks about the Romanian women and men and character in a way which I can instantly recognize; most importantly, she grounds the entire story in a place that she describes in its reality, not in a fictional way in which a foreign author who’s never been there would. I was more than impressed. I could look at my own city through someone else’s eyes, and it was a beautiful experience. David never hides these flaws, and does her best to persuade us that Manning was a great novelist. She deconstructs the novels to their author's skills and preoccupations, and shows how her fiction is put together. This is a worthwhile exercise, although it has the built-in danger of diminishing the books it seeks to celebrate. I was not seized by an urgent desire to read The Doves of Venus, The Play Room or The Rainforest. Despite the research and sensitivity that David brings to the study of such novels, I cannot help thinking that their plots sound thin and watery compared to the trilogies.

On 18 April 1941 Guy and Harriet Pringle (like Manning and Smith) depart for Greece on the last civilian ship to leave Piraeus (the port of Athens). Manning neglects to mention that on board are: George Seferis (the poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1963). Lawrence Durrell who like Guy worked for the British Council departed from Athens on a small private craft the same week. Manning's own life was probably seems to have been more interesting that of her fictional heroine. They proceed, then the mosque keeper indicates she needs to be barefoot. Harriet says in Egypt they give you slippers, but Halal tells her they are more strict here. I was reminded of Geraldine Brooks remarkable book Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, about the Muslim women she got to know as a journalist in Egypt and the Middle East in the 1980s, which among other things brought out the subtle and not so subtle differences in Muslim practices in the different countries (and even within them). We can't leave because we are such good people and can't leave the little Jew boy behind, even though he's ungrateful and super rich, like all Jews" Because at first food is everywhere in Bucharest—and food and hunger (physical and emotional) are central motifs that run through the trilogy. And the end of the 3rd book, when the noose almost closes (but not quite - they are British, after all) on the Pringles in Athens, the very last tip of Europe (and we sense how close Hitler came to having it all, indeed), is stark, dramatic and wrenching.But the film series has only smatterings of war engagements, one of which spends time with a young British soldier who is wounded in Egypt. And, otherwise, there seems to be a mix of concern about war or Nazi Germany among the characters. The film gives far too much time to frivolous matters and somewhat to characters whose parts are frivolous as well. We don't see much depth of character development of these people. These give way invariably to a local adventure for the heroine or a task for the hero. So, we get doses as well of scenery, monuments and antiquity in Greece and Egypt. Interwoven with these, are the personal stories – but just superficially for most of the characters. Not all, but most. So this is the rich setting into which the jewel of Manning's epic story of marriage, class, war, masculinity, manners (so many things!) is placed. The first book, as I've said, is almost unputdownable. Sadly, with Fortunes of War, casting works against the film. Where Guy Pringle is a big bear of a man in the novels, Branagh's sensitive Guy just isn't the same character. And where Harriet Pringle is a small and at times frail woman in the novels, Thompson's Harriet is, well, Emma Thompson. This is not a small matter. The novels' point of view is that of Harriet and what we get there is a detailed, personal, even intimate view of the Pringles' marriage. If you read these novels all in a rush, you almost become Harriet Pringle for a time, immersed in the details of her marriage, seeing the world through her eyes. There's a toughness to Harriet, but also vulnerability, something that Guy often misses as he plunges into one project after another. Little of this comes through in the film.

I had, what we call it, a book emergency. I would like to think I have learned from this. But I’m not hopeful. She had once been ambitious for Guy, but saw now the truth of the proverb that the children of darkness were wiser than the children of light. Guy, with all his charity, would probably remain ore or less where he had started." Yet, in the end, his very inattentiveness becomes a positive: "Could she, after all, have borne with some possessive, interfering, jealous fellow who would have wanted her to account for every breath she breathed? Not for long."

Success!

The second in the trilogy, “The Battle Lost and Won,” follows seamlessly on from, “The Danger Tree,” and begins with Simon Boulderstone arriveng in Cairo on leave. Simon had been under the belief that his brother, Hugo’s, girl was Edwina, who has a room in Dobson’s apartment, as do the Pringles and Lady Angela Hooper. Edwina though, is a frivolous girl, currently obsessed with a titled beau, called Peter, and the minor embarrassment caused over Simon’s uncomfortable arrival, results in his later being promoted to a liaison officer. Seriously, the Nazis are coming, the Nazis are coming. So, let’s put on a stage production of Troilus and Cressida. Again, the Nazis are coming, the Nazis are coming. Should we do Othello? Or maybe Macbeth? Or can we do our part with a lecture, something to cheer the locals, like Byron: the Poet-champion of Greece? Klein, a Jewish economist refugee. He has found temporary employment as an advisor to the Romanian government and is a source of news of its intrigues. The cycle also chronicles the pre-war and wartime experiences of the surrounding group of English expatriates who also find themselves on the move and the changes in Romanian society as the corrupt regime of King Carol II fails to keep Romania out of the war. It goes on to chronicle the British retreat from Greece to Egypt as the Axis forces advance in terms of its impact on the everyday lives of the expatriate community. The defence of Egypt and conditions in wartime Palestine are then described in later novels.