Rosemary Sutcliff (b. 1920; d. 1992) was  the subject of many magazine profiles. But sadly she is no longer alive to create a ‘This much I know’ feature in The Observer newspaper’s magazine. But this much she did know—revealed within her answers to Roy Plomley on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs.

• A spinal carriage is like a coffin.
• Chiefly I had books read to me, which is a thing I love to this day.
• I was never allowed to bring friends home.
• Miniature painting is cramping.
• I feel most at home in Roman Britain.
• I think I do believe in reincarnation.
• I can only create from the top of my head, down my right arm, and out of the point of my pen.
• I start with an idea; never a plot.
• I do not write to a standard length.
• I take great pains that details should be right.
• I don’t think I’m a particularly masculine kind of woman.
• I don’t know whose decision it was not to marry.

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