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

[legionseagle]

Things change once they get to Egypt. Again, in the show that was edge of the seat stuff (I think of it as Alexandria, but then I always think of Egypt as Alexandria.)

[liadnan]

I read the Cairo ones years ago (first, oddly) but I have forgotten much. I do remember having the Alexandria Quartet in the back of my mind throughout

[legionseagle]

I've recently been reading stuff about Lawrence Durrell and boy does he sound to have been a shit, which may affect how/if I re-read the Alexandria Quartet.

[liadnan]

All the Durrells were shits and the mother was monstrous (probably not at all well mentally, in her partial defence). My Family & Other Animals is *very* airbrushed.

I adore the Alexandria Quartet but have struggled with other stuff of his (and he does keep coming back to the same idea, which can get a bit wearisome)

[legionseagle]

A very slight college acquaintance of mine got dragged into Gerald Durrell's ambiance and while I held no brief for the acquaintance initially, I did get a fleeting sense of "Poor bugger" from his account (very late period Gerry, dramatic drunken rages.)

ETA also, Gerry's ire was all about "How dare those fucking Philistine oafs destroy Corfu?" and my acquaintance, as the heir of a substantial Northern beer and spirit fortune, was not unacquainted with privilege, but did try to draw the line at arrant hypocrisy.

[liadnan]

My interest in him was revived because I got to be a fan of the Zoo & Foundation and met people there when I was in Jersey for a while.You hear stories from that end too, also obviously lawyers, particularly offshore lawyers, never gossip but..

(I like it when clients want me to go out to Jersey in person because it means I can fit in going to talk to the gorillas and the orangutans, and am concerned the zoom era may put the kybosh on that).