Writer, journalist, and very knowledgeable Rosemary Sutcliff critic Amanda Craig has lost her job as children’s book reviewer at the Times newspaper. The role is to be brought “in-house”.

“Children’s literature is one of Britain’s greatest national treasures and it’s not something you can hope to cover well in-house,” she told The Bookseller for their article covering her firing.

Around the time of the release of the film The Eagle (of the Ninth) based upon the best-selling The Eagle of the Ninth she wrote about the “rediscovery” of “this great writer”. I am with the comments of living writers reported in the Bookseller:

Neil Gaiman said he was “enormously disappointed” by the decision to lose her, calling her “a perceptive champion of children’s books”. Francesca Simon said Craig had been one of her early champions and called the newspaper “crazy to lose her expertise”.

Let us hope Amanda  moves, as she hopes, to another national “with a more far-sighted vision of how readers are made”.

See here for her Times article