Sadly stuck behind their pay-wall are The Times Archives. In January 1983, within a long interview by Caroline Moorehead, Rosemary Sutcliff said of actually visiting battle sites:

“Modem times are a hindrance. The natural features of the land have been lost.”

Mind you, such research trips would anyway always have been a major project for her, given her severe physical disabilities. Some other quotes from Rosemary Sutcliff from the article are:

On writing her memoirs Blue Remembered Hills:

l happened to have a winter free. I was in between books. And being an only child, with far older cousins, who else is there to remember? And it was a happy childhood.

On periods of history she avoided:

I can’t get inside the medieval skin. I find the complete permeation of religious life too much for a free-thinker like myself, and beyond the eighteenth century is too cloak and dagger for my taste.

On when she wrote:

I hit that sudden post-war flowering of children’s literature and the golden age of –  the Oxford University Press.

On her rocking horse, Troubador:

About 15 years ago I decided that I was old enough, ugly enough, and successful enough, to indulge my eccentricities.