To mark World Book Day 2014 yesterday, Richard Davies of AbeBooks.co.uk chose ten ‘must-read’ children’s classics that can be bought secondhand for less than £1 each. One was The Witch’s Brat by Rosemary Sutcliff.
Famous for her historical fiction and retelling or myths and legends, Sutcliff transports readers to 12th century England in The Witch’s Brat, the tale of Lovel the outcast.
Lovel, the crippled hero of Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Witch’s Brat, is driven from his village in a shower of stones after his grandmother’s death. (The) novel (is) … crammed with careful period detail and research, the painstaking catalogues of herb-lore brought grippingly to life by the characters to whom they bring such danger.
Writing for The Guardian in 2011 Imogen Russell Williams explored the enchantments of witch fiction. Of The Witch’s Brat she wrote:
… Lovel, the crippled hero of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Witch’s Brat, is driven from his village in a shower of stones after his grandmother’s death. Both novels are crammed with careful period detail and research, the painstaking catalogues of herb-lore brought grippingly to life by the characters to whom they bring such danger.
The other titles in the top ten were:
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 
PS Just come up?
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I was just thinking about “Shadows on the Downs” :)
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Intriguing and new to me I think.
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Seeing Kipling’s influence on Sutcliff’s work has just come up, it’s interesting to speculate that the charismatic jester/monk Rahere who features in “Witch’s Brat” was probably first encountered by Sutcliff as a child in Kipling’s “Rewards and Fairies”, where he steals the scene in the story “Tree of Justice”.
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