Friends and Heroes was published by William Heinemann in 1965, completing the Balkan Trilogy. The Pringles have fled Bucharest and arrived in Athens — a city that, unlike Bucharest, is actively at war. Greece has repelled Mussolini’s invasion (the “friends” of the title are the Greeks whose courage briefly united the country), but everyone knows the German attack will come, and when it does, Athens will fall as every other European capital has fallen.
Manning’s Athens is a city of extraordinary vitality: impoverished, besieged, hungry, and yet more alive than the comfortable, corrupted Bucharest the Pringles left behind. The Greeks fight with genuine heroism — not the ideological commitment of the Russians or the professional competence of the British but a defiant joy in resistance that Manning renders with obvious admiration.
Harriet’s marriage reaches its crisis: Charles Warden reappears, and the attraction that was suppressed in Bucharest becomes more urgent in Athens — partly because the proximity of death makes all feelings more acute, partly because Guy’s continued emotional unavailability has become intolerable. Manning makes Harriet’s temptation real without making it simple: she loves Guy, she is attracted to Charles, and the situation permits no clean resolution.
The trilogy ends with evacuation — the Pringles boarding a ship as Athens falls — and the reader knows (from the Levant Trilogy that would follow) that they are heading toward Egypt, toward another theater of war, and toward further testing of a marriage that is damaged but not destroyed.
Collecting Friends and Heroes
First edition (William Heinemann, London, 1965): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $25–$60
- Signed first edition: $50–$120
- Complete Balkan Trilogy set (firsts): $80–$250