Author: Anthony Lawton

Chair, Sussex Dolphin, family company which looks after the work of eminent children’s & historical fiction author Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92). Formerly CEO, chair & trustee of various charity, cultural & educational enterprises in UK. Sometimes a consultant.

Is Rosemary Sutcliff’s Beric a Briton?

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Is Beric a Briton?: the Representation of Cultural Identity in G.A. Henty’s Beric the Briton (1893) and Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Outcast (1955) is an academic article by Rachel Johnson from 2009. (In: Past Continuous: Historical Fiction for Children, Newcastle University. , October 2009, Newcastle University). There is a copy of the article here. The Abstract summarises the thesis:

This article is an investigation into differences in the representation of cultural identity represented in Beric the Britain by G.A. Henty (1893) and The Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff (1955). G.A. Henty (1824-1902) and Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992) both present narratives of Britain under Roman invasion through the character of a young protagonist, initially perceived in both narratives as the product of a British tribal chieftain’s family with a clear cultural identity. Henty wrote in the second half of the nineteenth century at the height of imperial expansion when the sense of English cultural identity was strong. In contrast, Rosemary Sutcliff, writing post-empire, represents a more complex sense of identity. I investigate the mixed cultural identity of Sutcliff’s protagonist against the foundation of the exclusively British cultural identity of Henty’s Beric, thus foregrounding the increasing destabilization of cultural identity demonstrated in these two texts.

Off the Shelf | The Wanderings of Odysseus | NYTimes.com

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Rosemary Sutcliff gets mentioned in Off the Shelf, a weekly column on NYTimes.com which highlights “the books that inspire great talents, designers and entrepreneurs”.

This week, restaurateur Andrew Tarlow (of Brooklyn’s Marlow & Sons, Diner and Roman’s restaurants, and the butcher shop Marlow & Daughters) talks about “The Wanderings of Odysseus: The Story of the Odyssey” (Delacourte Press) by Rosemary Sutcliff, illustrated by Alan Lee. “In the book, Sutcliff and Lee turn Homer’s epic poem into a compelling pictorial tale … Tarlow on the slow road to success, his family’s affinity for ancient Greek myths and the things he learned from a Phaeacian princess about the art of hospitality.

via Off the Shelf | ‘The Wanderings of Odysseus’ – NYTimes.com.

Breast-beating romp, muscular battles, manly conflicts, meaty moral dilemmas | Mark Kermode | The Eagle DVD

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Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth has long been a set text for boys of a certain age, and Kevin Macdonald’s sword-and-sandal-swinging screen adaptation The Eagle (2011, Universal, 12) doesn’t stint on the kind of action beloved of this core audience. While Neil Marshall’s similarly themed (and underrated) Centurion descended head first into an enjoyably gruelling bloodbath, Macdonald’s adventure does a canny job of suggesting great violence while reining in the explicit visuals just enough to secure an all-important 12 certificate.

The impressively versatile Jamie Bell (whose finest work remains the sadly little seen Dear Wendy) makes for an engagingly conflicted antihero as the slave who must do his master’s bidding in the service of an unrepayable debt – leading Channing Tatum’s Roman legion north of Hadrian’s Wall in search of the titular lost emblem. While the result may lack the depth and complexity of Sutcliff’s source, it still adds up to a breast-beating romp packed with muscular battles, manly conflicts and meaty moral dilemmas.

via Mark Kermode’s DVD round-up | Film | The Observer.

Kipling | The Dykes | On conflict and the application of force?

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Rosemary Sutcliff loved the work of Rudyard Kipling. This poem is quoted in an official UK government publication about military doctrine in the British Army, in a chapter on ‘conflict and the application of force’!

So we come down, uneasy, to look; uneasily pacing the beach.
These are the dykes our fathers made: we have never known a breach.
Time and again has the gale blown by and we were not afraid;
Now we come only to look at the dykes – at the dykes our fathers made.

Now we can only wait till the day, wait and apportion our shame.
These are the dykes our fathers left, but we would not look to the same.
Time and again we were warned of the dykes, time and again we delayed.
Now, it may fall, we have slain our sons, as our fathers we have betrayed.

Walking along the wreck of the dykes, watching the works of the sea!
These were the dykes our fathers made, to our great profit and ease.
But the peace is gone and the profit is gone, with the old sure days withdrawn…
That our own houses show as strange, when we come back in the dawn!

Rudyard Kipling, The Dykes, in Rudyard Kipling’s Verse – Inclusive Edition 1885-1932 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933) 302-304

Andrew Miller’s top 10 historical novels | Books in guardian.co.uk

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The books listed here share the essential virtues of all good fiction: the renewal of our sense of the world, of ourselves, of language, the extension of ourselves across time and space. And how odd it would be, how dull, if novelists and readers confined themselves, in the name of some dubious notion of relevance, to the events and style of one particular period.”

Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff

As a boy, Rosemary Sutcliff was my favourite author and this, the story of a young Roman centurion caught up in the search for the lost eagle of the Ninth Legion, my favourite of her novels. I had not heard of her or of the novel in many years, but Eagle of the Ninth has just been made into a film. It would be nice to think that a new generation of young readers will discover the pleasures of Sutcliff’s writing. Librarians of the nation (those who are still left) stand by your desks!

via Andrew Miller’s top 10 historical novels | Books | guardian.co.uk.