The theme of The Great Fortune is the discovery of solid concord and tolerance which results from a shared predicament. Juxtaposing the personal, sometimes trivial, problems of individuals with the great European conflict which distantly threatens all their futures, Miss Manning leaves us with the consolation that the great fortune is indeed to have preserved life and hope; nothing else really matters….

As in all her novels, Miss Manning is brilliantly in control of her large and varied collection of characters, whom she manipulates into the stage parts which best reveal each one as though by chance, though one suspects that they were selected as modern counterparts to Shakespeare's Greeks and Trojans. Prince Yakimov, the social pander of all ages and all cosmopolitan cities, is a particularly satisfying creation….

It is part of Miss Manning's technique as a much-travelled writer to use the surroundings of her characters to...