The Spoilt City was published by William Heinemann in 1962, the second volume of the Balkan Trilogy. The “spoilt city” is Bucharest — still beautiful but rotting from within, its cafes and boulevards unchanged while the political ground shifts toward catastrophe. Romania, attempting neutrality, is being squeezed between Germany and the Soviet Union, and the novel follows the final months before the country falls definitively into the Axis orbit.
Harriet Pringle watches her husband with growing frustration: Guy is generous, brilliant, and politically committed — but his generosity extends to everyone except her, his brilliance is deployed in teaching rather than in their marriage, and his political commitment blinds him to personal danger. He refuses to leave Bucharest even as the situation deteriorates, believing his work matters more than safety.
The novel introduces Harriet’s growing attraction to Charles Warden — a British army officer whose quiet attention to her provides the emotional sustenance Guy cannot offer. Manning handles the near-affair with characteristic restraint: nothing happens, but the possibility of something happening reveals the depth of Harriet’s loneliness.
Meanwhile, the political situation collapses: the Iron Guard mounts a coup, Jews are massacred in the streets, the British community receives orders to evacuate, and the Pringles must finally flee — not to safety but to Athens, where the next volume will find them facing invasion again.
Collecting The Spoilt City
First edition (William Heinemann, London, 1962): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Signed first edition: $60–$150
- Without jacket: $8–$15