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Olivia Manning, OBE, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, spent much of her youth in Ireland and, as she puts it, had 'the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere'. The daughter of a naval officer, she produced her first novel, The Wind Changes, in 1937. She married just before the War and went abroad with her husband, R.D. Smith, a British Council lec-turer in Bucharest. Her experiences there formed the basis of the work which makes up The Balkan Trilogy. As the Germans approached Athens, she and her husband evacuated to Egypt and ended up in charge of the Palestine Broadcasting Station. They returned to London in 1946 and lived there until her death in 1980.
One most salute the brilliance ... the exactness of sights and sounds, the precise touches of light and scent, the gestures and entrances. * Guardian * So glittering is the overall parade ... and so entertaining the surface that the trilogy remains excitingly vivid; it amuses, it diverts and it informs, and to do these things so elegantly is no small achievement * Sunday Times * A fantastically tart and readable account of life in eastern Europe at the start of the war -- Sarah Waters Wonderfully entertaining * Observer * Magnificent ... full of wit, sharp insight and vivid description. * The Times *
