I am immensly enjoying the dramatisation of the Olivia Manning books "Fortunes of War" on BBC Radio 4. It really is a cracking good dramatisation with narration by Joanna Lumley, and very good she is too.
I remember the BBC TV 1 production, back in the 1980's wasn't it? With Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompsom. That was good too.
This Radio version, a new version manages to capture all the best of Olivia Mannings writing style, all her nuances and the emotion of what it must have been like to be civilians always just one jump ahead of being captured by the Germans or arrested by the Fascists in Bucharest. In fact, the first 2 episodes which are set in Bucharest are really the best, very tense. The novels (there are six in total; two trilogies) are only thinly disguised biography of the lives of Olivia and her husband, who was a member of staff of the British Council and later head of the BBC Palestine Broadcasting company 1943-1946. As an interesting aside you can visit the MI 5 website to see the archive record of both. Husband was a member of the Communist Party but, amazingly this only came to light as late as 1948.
In the middle of the bloodiest war in history there seems to be a lot of partying and getting drunk as well as some very good insights into the typical snobbish middle and upper class Brits. The Lord Professor Pinkrose is a classic in that regard; arrogant, stupid, shallow and concerned only for # 1. I must say that his sacking from the British Council (for deserting his post and fleeing to Palestine), soon after everyone arrives in Egypt cheered me greatly. The shooting dead of Prince Yakimov in Athens, a useless and futile death caused by Greek nationalist resentment of the Brits and Yaki's craving for a cigarette (" put that cigarette out!) is a truly poignant and very sad moment, especially his very hurried burial only hours before the German Panzers enter Athens, and only minutes before the Brits take ship for Alexandria.
Catch it if you can, Sunday afternoons 3 pm, repeated Saturday evening, 9 pm. It is sure to be repeated in the next year.
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