University of Ulster in Coleraine. The couple subsequently lived apart for long periods, as Manning rejected the idea of moving to Ireland. In 1974 Manning adapted two of Arnold Bennett's works (The Card and The Regent) into an eight part BBC Radio play: Denry - The Adventures Of A Card. Graham Armitage portrayed the eponymous Denry with Ursula O'Leary as the beautiful Countess of Chell. Manning was always a close observer of life, and gifted with a photographic memory. She told her friend Kay Dick that, "I write out of experience, I have no fantasy. I don't think anything I've experienced has ever been wasted. Her 1974 novel The Rain Forest showed off her creative skills in her portrayal of a fictional island in the Indian Ocean and its inhabitants. Set in 1953, the novel's central characters are a British couple; the book examines their personal experiences and tragedies against the background of a violent end to colonial British rule. The book is one of Manning's lesser-known books, and she was disappointed that it was not shortlisted for the Booker prize. Early in 1975 Manning began The Danger Tree, which for a time she described as "The Fourth Part of the Balkan Trilogy"; in the event, it became the first novel in The Levant Trilogy, continuing the story of the Pringles in the Middle East. The first book proved "a long struggle" to write, in part because of Manning's lack of confidence in her powers of invention: the book juxtaposes the Desert War experiences of a young officer, Simon Boulderstone, with the securer lives of the Pringles and their circle. Manning, fascinated by sibling relationships, and remembering the death of her own brother, also examined the relationship between Simon and his elder brother, Hugo. She felt inadequate in her ability to write about soldiers and military scenes; initial reviewers agreed, finding her writing unconvincing and improbable, though subsequent reviewers have been considerably kinder. While some parts of the book were inventions, she also made use of real-life incidents. The opening chapter of The Danger Tree describes the accidental death of the young son of Sir Desmond and Lady Hooper. The incident was based on fact: Sir Walter and Lady Amy Smart's eight-year-old boy was killed when he picked up a stick bomb during a desert picnic in January 1943. Just as described in the novel, his grief-stricken parents had tried