In The  Scotsman on Kevin Macdonald, Oscar-winning Scottish director of the film of Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth, said : “I read the book when I was a kid, and it was just something that had always stuck in my mind as a great mystery adventure.”  Like Rosemary, his love is great story-telling:

“The documentarian in me says that every film is about telling a story, and that fundamentally the reason we go to movies is to be swept away by a great story,”

Elsewhere he has spoken of approaching the The Eagle of the Ninth story like a Western: Rosemary Sutcliff herself also loved Westerns. She would watch films on TV after a hard days writing at her home in Walberton, West Sussex.