Her constant grumbling about all manner of subjects is reflected in her nickname, "Olivia Moaning", but Smith never wavered in his role as his wife's principal supporter and encourager, confident that her talent would ultimately be recognised.

At the age of 45, while visiting the port of Belfast, he met Olivia Morrow, a publican's daughter fourteen years his junior; they married less than a month later in December 1904, in the Presbyterian church in her home town of Bangor, County Down.

[3] Manning's first published works were three serialised detective novels, Rose of Rubies, Here is Murder and The Black Scarab which appeared in the Portsmouth News beginning in 1929 under the pseudonym Jacob Morrow.

[25] Manning obtained other work assessing new novels for their potential as films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but by the time she had saved sufficient money for a trip to Edinburgh, Miles was too ill to see her.

The two developed an immediate rapport[19][24] and enjoyed exploring London's backstreets, with regular outings to museums, cinema, and visits to the Palmers Green home that Smith shared with an eccentric aunt.

The impact of the Munich Agreement (1938), the German–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (1939), and the Fall of France (1940) increased German influence and control over the country, and included demands that Romania cede territory and resources.

[45][46] Manning spent her days writing; her main project was a book about Henry Morton Stanley and his search for Emin Pasha,[47] but she also maintained an intimate correspondence with Stevie Smith, which was full of Bloomsbury gossip and intrigue.

Manning had her admirers, including Terence Spencer, a British Council lecturer who acted as her companion while Smith was busy with other activities – he later appeared as the character Charles Warden in Friends and Heroes, the third book of The Balkan Trilogy.

[54] In spite of early successes against invading Italian forces, by April 1941 the country was at risk of invasion from the Germans; in a later poem Manning recalled the "horror and terror of defeat" of a people she had grown to love.

[55][56] The British Council advised its staff to evacuate, and on 18 April Manning and Smith left Piraeus for Egypt on the Erebus, the last civilian ship to leave Greece.

[28][83] During her time in Egypt, Manning became a contributor to two Middle East-based literary magazines, "Desert Poets" and "Personal Landscapes", founded by Bernard Spencer, Lawrence Durrell and Robin Fedden.

"[86][87] During their time in Egypt and Palestine Manning and her husband maintained close links with refugee Greek writers, including translating and editing the work of George Seferis and Elie Papadimitriou.

Returning to Jerusalem, she was still far from well, and the poet Louis Lawler noticed the discontent of this "strange and difficult woman" and Smith's "wonderfully patient" behaviour, despite Manning calling her husband by his last name throughout the period.

[105] Fuelled by plenty of gin and tonic to cover her shyness, Manning could be a witty participant in London's literary scene;[106][107] as in childhood she was given to making boastful inventions, such as claiming a family relationship to Marie Belloc Lowndes and that she had received a marriage proposal from Anthony Burgess the morning after his wife's death.

At parties, Smith would regularly ask other women if they were interested in extramarital encounters, while Manning claimed to have had affairs with both William Gerhardie and Henry Green, and engaged in an unrequited pursuit of her lodger, Tony Richardson.

[139] The 1970s brought a number of changes to the household: the couple moved to a smaller apartment following Smith's early retirement from the BBC and 1972 appointment as a lecturer at the New University of Ulster in Coleraine.

[76][77] Though both Sir Walter and his wife had died by the time of publication, Manning's publisher received a solicitor's letter written on behalf of the Smart family, objecting to the scene and requiring that there should be no further reference to the incident or to the couple in future volumes.

[153] Manning's last years were also made difficult by physical deterioration; arthritis increasingly affected her,[154] leading to hip replacements in 1976 and in 1979 and she suffered poor health related to amoebic dysentery caught in the Middle East.

[155] Manning began work on the final novel in The Levant Trilogy, The Sum of Things, in which Harriet agrees to sail home to the UK, but having said goodbye to Guy, changes her mind.

His mourning period, characterised by abrupt transitions from weeping to almost hysterical mirth, was precisely how Manning had imagined Guy Pringle's reaction to Harriet's supposed death in The Sum of Things.

[9][159] As it happened, her renown and readership developed substantially after her death; a television serialisation of Fortunes of War starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh finally came to fruition in 1987, bringing her work to a wider audience.

[166][170][171] Manning's talent for "exquisite evocations of place",[172] including physical, cultural and historical aspects have been widely admired,[41][166] and the critic Walter Allen complimented her "painter's eye for the visible world".

[46] The Levant Trilogy, set in the Middle East, is praised for its detailed description of Simon Boulderstone's desert war experience and the juxtaposition of the Pringles and their marriage with important world events.

[176][177] Theodore Steinberg argues for the Fortunes of War to be seen as an epic novel, noting its broad scope and the large cast of interesting characters set at a pivotal point of history.

[173][178][179] In Steinberg's perspective, the books also challenge the typically male genre conventions of the epic novel by viewing the war principally through the eyes of a female character "who frequently contrasts her perceptions with those of the men who surround her".

[101][183] Her travel book about Ireland, The Dreaming Shore (1950), received a mixed review even from her old friend Louis MacNeice,[184] but extracts from this and other of Manning's Irish writing have subsequently been admired and anthologised.

[40][166] Views differ on her success in the Fortunes of War battlescenes; initial reviews by Auberon Waugh and Hugh Massie criticised them as implausible and not fully realised,[195] but later commentators have describing her depiction of battle as vivid, poignant and largely convincing.

[205] The School for Love (1951) is the tale of an orphaned boy's journey of disillusionment in a city that is home to Arabs, Jews and a repressive, colonial presence represented in the novel by the cold, self-righteous, and anti-Semitic character of Miss Bohun.

[206] Manning explores these themes not only in her major novels set in Europe and the Middle East, but also in her Irish fiction, The Wind Changes (1937) and eight short stories which were mostly written early in her career.

"[211] In Manning's books, the word "feminine" is used in a derogatory sense, and tends to be associated with female complacency, foolishness, artifice and deviousness,[41] and fulfilment for women comes in fairly conventional roles of wife, mother and the private domain.