Rosemary Sutcliff, her children’s books and indeed her illustrators, figure occasionally in the intriguing blog of Daughter Number Three. Today by chance a google alert told me of her comments at a book collector’s blog about the pleasure of finding some ‘pristine’ Rosemary Sutcliff books in an Edinburgh book-shop. She said:

My most recent bookstore moment was in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the end of the Royal Mile near Mary Queen of Scot’s palace. There’s a used bookstore near the gate, and in it I found half a dozen pristine Rosemary Sutcliff titles that would never be available in the U.S. (I supposed I could have ordered them over the Internet, but where’s the fun in that?)

I carried them around the rest of the day, on the train back to where we were staying, and all the way home in my luggage. And every time I think of them or see them, I’m happy I did.