Fortunes of War

[liadnan]

Started re-reading Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War sequence and struck once more by how appallingly ghastly Guy Pringle is. You have to wonder how your marriage - vaguely open though it was - would prosper once you'd turned your real-life husband into a character like that. (Her friendship with Stevie Smith apparently did not survive Manning putting her into a different novel, followed by Stevie Smith reviewing said novel in venomous terms)

Difficult to see Pringle as the Soviet spy the real-life Reggie Smith allegedly was though. (supposedly recruited by Blunt).

Comments

[liadnan]

I've yet to watch it. But I can imagine Charming Branagh as Pringle very easily

[legionseagle]

He's brilliant in the role. Mind you, Thompson outacts him, nonetheless.

[liadnan]

It's only now I am really coming to see how good an actress she is, I confess.

[legionseagle]

She had a solo comedy sketch show that fell as flat as a pancake in the (very) early nineties and yet was genius in its own way, and would have been given more rope had she been a bloke.

[coughingbear]

I adored that show, and was sad it didn't continue.

WRT Manning/Smith in real life, an aspect that does come through very strongly in the Deirdre David biography as oursin mentions, is both that Smith supported and believed in her writing, and of course that her writing significantly absorbed Manning, where Harriet doesn't have that kind of outlet.