Olivia Manning

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

Were you born in Ireland?

Olivia Manning0:09

No, I was born in Portsmouth. My father was a naval officer.

Presenter0:13

Did you go to school there?

Olivia Manning0:14

Dear s

Presenter0:15

Yeah.

Olivia Manning0:15

Uh

Presenter0:15

When did you decide that you wanted to write?

Olivia Manning0:19

I can't say that I ever decided I wanted to write. I've always written. I before I could write I used to tell stories.

Olivia Manning0:27

And then as soon as I learnt to write, I wrote stories.

Olivia Manning0:31

Um beginning with fairy stories and things like that and going on to more sophisticated sort of stories.

Presenter0:34

Bring it.

Presenter0:38

Such as who were the authors that interested you most as a youngster?

Olivia Manning0:38

Such as who

Olivia Manning0:41

As a youngster, um

Olivia Manning0:44

Oh, I think all the usual children's books. I I I particularly loved Hans Anderson.

Olivia Manning0:51

And I think the fa the fairy the the one about the Snow Queen and uh the one about the swan, you'll know I I they've always

Presenter0:57

Yeah.

Olivia Manning1:01

It's been enormously.

Olivia Manning1:03

Wonderful stories for me.

Presenter1:04

And later on?

Olivia Manning1:05

Later on, well, when I was beginning to

Olivia Manning1:10

learn more about life. I I suddenly, at a stage in my development, discovered Ryder Haggard.

Olivia Manning1:16

I think the first grown-up book, if one could call it that, that I ever read was a novel by Ryder Hagger called Finished, which was about the Zulas.

Presenter1:24

There's

Olivia Manning1:25

And it was a revelation to me, you know, of what reading could be, and I became enormously excited about him.

Olivia Manning1:32

He was the first adult writer that I ever read, I think. And from him I then went on to um people like HG Wells and Bernard Shaw and so on.

Olivia Manning1:43

the great writers of my day.

Presenter1:46

What did you do when you left school?

Olivia Manning1:47

Um well, I had to earn my own living somehow, and I'd been taught to type, very much against my will.

Olivia Manning1:54

But um I wasn't a typist for very long. I found it too boring. And um I went to London and I got a job

Olivia Manning2:04

Um, in the Feniter studios where I used to paint Fenitor. The great days of Regency, you know, when everything was covered with swags and urns and things.

Presenter2:08

Uh

Presenter2:12

Yeah. Were you writing in your spare time?

Olivia Manning2:14

Oh yeah.

Presenter2:14

F

Olivia Manning2:15

I I went back straight back to my room in Oakley Street and and and wrote.

Presenter2:15

What if

Presenter2:21

Working by day and writing by night, this was the pattern until you're married.

Olivia Manning2:25

Yes.

Presenter2:26

Now, you were married shortly before the war, Olivia, to a man who's now a distinguished BBC drama producer, R. D. Smith, and you went off to Bucharest. What was he doing then?

Olivia Manning2:35

He was lecturing.

Olivia Manning2:37

uh in English, uh for the British Council.

Presenter2:40

Hmm.

Olivia Manning2:41

And

Olivia Manning2:42

Um

Olivia Manning2:43

We had to go back because they they were afraid that the war would cut us off, you know, that he wouldn't get back to Bucharest.

Presenter2:47

Yeah.

Presenter2:50

In fact, the war s got you out of Bucharest quite soon.

Olivia Manning2:53

No, we were there for a whole year.

Presenter2:55

Yes.

Olivia Manning2:56

And then uh we had to leave because the German army was coming in. I went first to Greece, but my husband actually saw the Germans marching in.

Presenter3:05

Mhm. Then you had a rather adventurous war being pushed around. The Northins in the Near East.

Olivia Manning3:11

Well, we had hardly arrived in Greece when the Italians presented an ultimatum with Greece, and the Greeks decided to fight.

Olivia Manning3:17

So we had six months of a completely new sort of war, which was the the Greco-Italian one, which was very exciting.

Olivia Manning3:25

Especially when the Greeks were winning.

Olivia Manning3:27

And then, alas, the the Germans came in and the Greeks were defeated.

Olivia Manning3:33

And when the Germans had reached thermopylae they decided the British had to be evacuated somehow.

Olivia Manning3:39

And we went out on the last boat which left the Pereas with civilians. I think some of the soldiers came after us, but

Olivia Manning3:47

Most of the soldiers went down into the Peloponnese and got away from small ports.

Presenter3:52

Yes. Where did you go?

Olivia Manning3:54

We went to Alexandra.

Olivia Manning3:57

and uh then to Cairo and uh

Olivia Manning4:01

My husband worked in Alexandra, but I went back to Cairo and um

Olivia Manning4:06

worked for as a public information officer at the American Embassy.

Presenter4:11

In recent years you you've written a major work, a trilogy of novels, about a young couple who, curiously enough, go to Bucharest on the outbreak of the last war and follow more or less the same route that you and Reggie followed. In your writing you do draw a great deal from your own experiences and from the people around you.

Olivia Manning4:28

Well, I I don't really think that he's drawn

Olivia Manning4:32

completely from my experience.

Olivia Manning4:35

Um the events, the major events, the background, and so on are of course absolutely genuine. Most of the characters were invented.

Olivia Manning4:44

Um

Olivia Manning4:46

The two main characters are only based on us, they say, and the.

Olivia Manning4:51

happenings the happenings between the people are all invented.

Olivia Manning4:56

Um

Olivia Manning4:58

As a matter of fact, one would have to do an awful lot of inventing to avoid the English libel laws.

Presenter5:04

What's your most recent work?

Olivia Manning5:06

It's a novel called The Playroom.

Olivia Manning5:09

uh which is about young modern young people.

Olivia Manning5:13

Um, teenagers.

Olivia Manning5:15

discovering life and sex and things of that sort.

Olivia Manning5:19

Um

Olivia Manning5:20

One of them.

Olivia Manning5:22

ending up rather tragically as a result of her discoveries.

Presenter5:25

Olivia, what are your writing habits? Are you a disciplined writer?

Olivia Manning5:29

No. Um

Olivia Manning5:32

I have

Olivia Manning5:33

Uh being a married woman and a housewife and and not being very rich.

Olivia Manning5:37

I have to do quite a lot of other things.

Olivia Manning5:40

Um but I usually manage to write in the afternoons.

Presenter5:44

Hm. When you start a book, to what extent have you planned it? Do you work from a chapter by chapter synopsis, or do you visualize characters and see what happens to them, or something in between?

Olivia Manning5:53

Uh the most important thing is the characters, and they usually take over. I mean I I begin the book out of characters, or often one character.

Olivia Manning6:04

Um actually the character that that meant most to me in the Balkan trilogy was Yakimov.

Presenter6:11

The the print.

Olivia Manning6:12

The Prince.

Olivia Manning6:14

He was a concept of my own because he's not based on anyone. Um we never knew Yakima and the same thing with the novel I now want to start writing, it's embased entirely on one character.

Presenter6:29

How many drafts do we usually write?

Olivia Manning6:31

Two. Two long hand drawers. Then

Olivia Manning6:35

Uh I type it roughly and then rewrite.

Olivia Manning6:38

on the TypeScript.

Presenter6:40

How ruthlessly do you discard what doesn't please you? I mean, could you, for example, tear up twenty thousand words?

Olivia Manning6:44

Kotu for example.

Olivia Manning6:46

Yes.

Olivia Manning6:47

Cool.

Presenter6:48

How well could you stand up to the isolation on this island?

Olivia Manning6:53

Well, as a writer

Olivia Manning6:56

I spend a great deal of my time in isolation. It's essential to me.

Olivia Manning7:01

Um but at the same time I really need the stimulus of company.

Olivia Manning7:06

Between

Olivia Manning7:08

Times, you know, and um, I don't think I'd stand up terribly well to complete isolation. How well?

Presenter7:14

How well could you manage practically?

Olivia Manning7:17

Fairly well.

Presenter7:18

Mm

Olivia Manning7:19

I'm quite practical.

Olivia Manning7:20

Um

Olivia Manning7:22

Yes, I think I'm a survivor.

Presenter7:24

Would you try to escape if a craft was washed up?

Olivia Manning7:26

Yeah.

Olivia Manning7:27

And no, I wouldn't set out on a craft. No, I don't think so. I I I should certainly keep a fire burning, in the hope that somebody would see that that I was a