Freaked out for years by ghost legionaries in Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth

James Dunlop has commented on another post:

My 1977 copy of The Eagle of the Ninth (by Rosemary Sutcliff) still has the entry from the Radio Times (with a photo of Anthony Higgins as Marcus … ) glued inside the front cover. I’ve also got a page torn out of the Radio Times lurking somewhere – I was nine at the time and it made a really big impression on me. I’m now an archaeologist who really doesn’t have much time for Romans, but when I re-read The Eagle of the Ninth last year, I still found Marcus a really lovely – and yet at the same time convincingly Roman – character.

Oh, and I remember there was that bit with the dream where the ghost legionaries turned round and had skulls instead of faces. That stayed with me for YEARS!! I was freaked out by skeletons for decades afterwards (though I’ve grown out of that little foible now, thank goodness!)

One thought on “Freaked out for years by ghost legionaries in Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth

  1. Oh I LOVED this mini series. It was broadcast in Australia when I was a kid. Wasn’t the theme tune brilliant too. (The BBC did a few wonderful kids series… Robin Hood was another one.) I tried over the years to find DVDs of it for my children, but never succeeded. Now I live in the UK and love anything Roman- is this the “Sutcliff effect”?

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