Program Title
Fortunes of War

Episode Title
Part 1

Episode number:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Description
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

Original broadcast date
1988-01-17

Cast	Characters
Kenneth Branagh	Guy Pringle
Emma Thompson	Harriet Pringle
Ronald Pickup	Prince Yakimov
Charles Kay	Dobson
James Villiers	Inchcape
Desmond McNamara	Galpin
Mark Drewry	Dubedat
Richard Clifford	Clarence Lawson
Harry Burton	Sasha Drucker
Barry Jackson	McCann
Elena Secota	Sophie Oresanu
Vernon Dobtcheff	Prince Hadjimoscos
Caroline Langrishe	Bella Niculesco
Relja Basic	Emmanuel
Glyn Grain	Foxy Leverett
Nicholas Amer	Palu
Alan Bennett	Lord Pinkrose
Philip Madoc	Freddie von Flugel
Christopher Strauli	Toby Lush
Clifford Rose	Professor Gracey
Rupert Graves	Simon Boulderstone
Robert Stephens	Castlebar
Ciaran Madden	Angela Hooper
Jack Watling	Sir Desmond Hooper
Diana Hardcastle	Edwina Little
Greg Hicks	Aiden Pratt
Michael Cochrane	Clifford
Anthony Calf	Corporal Arnold
Jeremy Sinden	Lord Lisdoonvarna
Sam Dastor	Dr. Shafik
Patricia Quinn	Mona Castlebar
Claire Oberman	Mortimer

Credits

Producer: Betty Willingale
Director: James C Jones

Intro
Fortunes of War/Episode 1/Intro by Alistair Cooke

Good evening, I'm Alistair Cooke.

Tonight we recall the name and hope to revive the great reputation of Olivia Manning, who as long ago as the 1930s was hailed as a fine, new English novelist. But nothing in her early work prepared us for her masterpiece, a two thousand page novel divided into two trilogies: The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy, which in this BBC-adaptation is called Fortunes of War. Of course it's fiction, but it closely follows Olivia Manning's own experience of the Second World War.

It begins at the very end of August 1939 when a young Englishman, Guy Pringle, returns with his bride, Harriet, to his post as a university lecturer. This is in Bucharest where they also return to his circle of eccentric ex-patriots who are as unaware as the Romanians themselves that within the year Romania will be partitioned between the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Nazi Germany. The story opens on a train taking the young couple to Bucharest only days after the invasion of Poland by the Nazis.

Now, Fortunes of War, episode one.



Episode number: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7




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