… clearing off letters … (Rosemary Sutcliff Diary, 15/9/89)

September 15th Thursday. Joan gone again, very het up about her Canadian holiday. Clearing off letters now that the postal strike seems, with luck, to be largely over. G came in the evening, very distrait.

Joan was one of Rosemary Sutcliff’s housekeepers, who took it in turns to live with her and keep house for several weeks at a time.

“Distrait”: absent-minded; distracted (from Collins Concise Dictionary).

2 thoughts on “… clearing off letters … (Rosemary Sutcliff Diary, 15/9/89)

  1. I’m wondering if Rosemary wrote anything about Joan’s visit to Canada. Since I live in Canada, I’m wondering what she thought of her trip here, and where exactly she went. That got me thinking how great it would have been for a Rosemary Sutcliff writing about Canada. Of course, we have L.M. Montgomery, who wrote about Prince Edward Island, but she wrote about more contemporary happenings. I read two books this summer about the historicity of King Arthur. Many times I thought back to what Rosemary wrote about those days. One was by Elizabeth Jenkins who included lovely medieval illuminations and the like. The other was by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman. They make a good case for Arthur being based on around 440-520 AD. Jenkins contents herself with saying that Arthur was a real person but not a king. Then she showed examples of writings or art in which his name appears.

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