Olivia Manning
1908–1980 (age 72)
Biography
Olivia Manning, born in 1908, turned her wartime travels into novels such as the "Fortunes of War" sequence that captured the challenges of living in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatres. Her keen observations of exile, friendship, and resilience informed both her fiction and the screenplays she crafted later in life.
The depth of her characters and the clarity of her prose ensured her work remained widely read and adapted long after she settled in Britain, and the warmth of her storytelling continues to inspire readers even after her death in 1980.