- September 1939. War breaks out as newly-married Guy and Harriet Pringle set out on a journey across Europe and into the heart of the Balkans - to Romania where an uneasy neutrality reigns.
- Although fiction, the author is mentioned in a documentary book by Ivor Porter: "Operation Autonomous - With SOE in Wartime Romania", where the author - Olivia Manning - is the heroine "Harriet Pringle". Actually, Olivia was the wife of Reggie Smith - the number two at the British Institute, attached to the British Council (Legation) before and at the start of WW2 in Bucharest.
In her very critical book, a very frustrated and scorned wife (Olivia Manning Smith), she portraits her husband (Reggie as Guy Pringle) as Ivor Porter's person under the name of Guy Pringle, the heroine's adulterous husband, with critical views of both the Romanian people, as well as the British Legation's members. Throughout this narrative, one can sense the typical "stiff upper lip" of a "British" expatriate who finds no place among "barbarian" peoples of the Balkan region. "British" attitude reflected by a lady who was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire - and who spent much of her youth in Ireland ...
A delightful, if satirical portrait of Romanian "high society", a mixture of feudal reminiscence spoiled by fake "French" pseudo-culture, midst British, German and other European expatriates coping with radical per-war German invasion changes. Moving further to other parts of the Mid-East countries - as refugees with no country - it follows with the condescending attitude of a self-described (by the author herself, as she put it) ... "the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere" ... It remains, nevertheless, a very original portrait of the era, as well as a remarkable and captivating reading.
A very fine book, an illustration of the Romanian society and politics around the 1930-1940s, quite harsh in the view of a British visitor...
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of The Balkans: September 1939 (1987) in Australia?
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