Mrs Prosser has a virus … which complicates things rather badly (Diary, 10/4/88)

April 10th Sunday. The most beautiful day, tho’ still with a chilly wind. Geraldine in for tea. Mrs Prosser has a virus of some kind and won’t be able to come on Tuesday, which complicates everything rather badly as Sheila wants to go into Chichester on Tuesday morning.

© Anthony Lawton 2012

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

@RyanKrolAuthor All those people who enjoy #ReadingRosemarySutcliff for a start ….! https://t.co/RyU9w517Au | 11 hours ago

Plus they have a “beautifully presented enthusiasm” for the “irresistible” RosemarySutcliff …… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 11 hours ago

If you are minded to enthuse young pupils (but also adult learners) about poetry, this thread has some great ideas… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 11 hours ago

Ewan MacColl in 1945 with Joan Littlewood (to whom he was married at that time) founded Theatre Workshop; he was th… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 14 hours ago

Ewan MacColl died #OTD Oct. 22, 1989, in London; singer, songwriter, and playwright. He co-created (with Charles Pa… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 14 hours ago

This today @guardian about when Vikings were first on North American soil would’ve interested Rosemary Sutcliff; ju… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 15 hours ago

@MichaelRosenYes Cries and Wispas #SweetTitles | 1 day ago

@MichaelRosenYes The Malteser Falcon #SweetTitles | 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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