A Circlet of Oak Leaves (from 1968) | By Rosemary Sutcliff

I have been slowly updating, and I hope improving, the page here on this website with the brief summaries of the stories that Rosemary Sutcliff tells in her books. So, A Circlet of Oak Leaves (from 1968):

Gradually reveals the mystery behind a humble horse-breeder Aracos’s award for outstanding bravery. It tells the story of a daring exploit when Roman auxiliaries and legionnaires fought the Picts on the northern borders of England. Standing in for Felix, a legionary sick with fear before a battle, he fights with great courage and then sees Felix receive the Corona Civica for what he has been through.

Author: Anthony Lawton

Chair, Sussex Dolphin, family company which looks after the work of eminent children’s & historical fiction author Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92). Formerly CEO, chair & trustee of various charity, cultural & educational enterprises in UK. View all posts by Anthony Lawton

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twitter @rsutcliff

On optimism — a favourite quote from a favourite non-fiction non- Rosemary Sutcliff book https://t.co/kaDy67Hu7K | 4 minutes ago

Very good to see @ToppingsEly bookshop, in Ely of course, encouraging, inter alia, #ReadingRosemarySutcliff — via t… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 6 hours ago

An endorsement for #ReadingRosemarySutcliff from an ‘illusive and half apparent man’…and poet. twitter.com/mathjonespoet/… | 7 hours ago

RT @LRB: In the wolf garden of that Europe, there were two ways for a state to survive. One was to be strong. The other path to safety, str… | 1 day ago

@konallis I agree. I say to all who ask, and many who don’t, that Rosemary Sutcliff’s memoir Blue Remembered Hills… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 1 day ago

Rosemary Sutcliff loved a glorious pair of shoes, and a reason to dress-up and wear them! twitter.com/electra_rhodes… | 1 day ago

@YesWombat @higgledygarden Agree (of course) with @YesWombat recommending #ReadingRosemarySutcliff! So much to cho… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 1 day ago

Yes! This recommendation (from @ElizabethHume to @YorkshireBooks48) for the #ReadingRosemarySurcliff’s historical f… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 1 day ago

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the guardian newspaper in praise of rosemary sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff‘s 1954 children’s classic The Eagle of the Ninth (still in print more than 50 years on) is the first of a series of novels in which Sutcliff, who died in 1992, explored the cultural borderlands between the Roman and the British worlds – “a place where two worlds met without mingling” as she describes the British town to which Marcus, the novel’s central character, is posted.

Marcus is a typical Sutcliff hero, a dutiful Roman who is increasingly drawn to the British world of “other scents and sights and sounds; pale and changeful northern skies and the green plover calling”. This existential cultural conflict gets even stronger in later books like The Lantern Bearers and Dawn Wind, set after the fall of Rome, and has modern resonance. But Sutcliff was not just a one-trick writer.

The range of her novels spans from the Bronze Age and Norman England to the Napoleonic wars. Two of her best, The Rider of the White Horse and Simon, are set in the 17th century and are marked by Sutcliff’s unusually sympathetic (for English historical novelists of her era) treatment of Cromwell and the parliamentary cause. Sutcliff’s finest books find liberal-minded members of elites wrestling with uncomfortable epochal changes. From Marcus Aquila to Simon Carey, one senses, they might even have been Guardian readers.

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Author: Anthony Lawton

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