Olivia Manning, OBE, was born in Portsmouth, England and spent much of her youth in Ireland. She married just before World War II and went to live in Bucharest with her husband. Her experience there formed the basis of the work that makes up The Balkan Trilogy. As the Germans approached Athens, she and her husband evacuated to Egypt and ended up in Jerusalem. They returned to London in 1946 and lived there until her death in 1980.