Can you remember the first novel you read?
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff.
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.
Bestselling author Rosemary Sutcliff had an “entire lack of interest in being educated”!
Here in the UK government ministers are obsessing about streaming within school education. They assume everyone is interested in being educated at school. Rosemary Sutcliff wasn’t …
My schooling began late, owing to a childhood illness, and ended when I was only fourteen, owing to my entire lack of interest in being educated. But I showed signs of being able to paint, and so from school I went to art school, trained hard, and eventually became a professional miniature painter. I did not start to write until the end of the War, but now I have switched completely from one medium to the other, and it is several years since I last touched paint.
- Source: From Rosemary Sutcliff’s monograph about Rudyard Kipling
- More biographical information about Rosemary Sutcliff on this blog (and see tabs at top of page)
KV Johansen on Rosemary Sutcliff’s influence
KV Johansen commented on another version of this site earlier this year, and I have only just caught up (again) with it.
This is a wonderfully thorough site, Anthony. At a time when libraries are weeding all the twentieth century classics because children allegedly won’t (or can’t) read them, it’s important for someone to be pointing out why great books go on being great, the influence they’ve had on readers and writers, and the impact they are still having on young readers. (Mind you, all the weeding makes it easier to find used copies of favourites missing from the personal collection.)
You asked for mentions of other material on Sutcliff. I talked about her a bit in the chapter on retellings of the Arthurian and Robin Hood legends in my book on the history of children’s fantasy literature, Quests and Kingdoms (2005). Managed to sneak in some mention of her Romans, too, via Lantern Bearers and Sword at Sunset. I think Sutcliff is up there just below Tolkien in the “what shaped my deepest imagination and why I’m a writer writing the kinds of things I write” list.
Rosemary Sutcliff fan posts coronation stone photo from The Mark of the Horse Lord on Facebook
Royce Watson posted at the Rosemary Sutcliff page on Facebook a picture he took a few years ago when he was on holiday in Scotland. He wrote:”It’s the footprint on the coronation stone at Dunadd Fort, as mentioned in the book (The Eagle of the Ninth). Enjoyed the book, big fan.” Eagle eyed Anne, who is, to my shame, much sharper-eyed and more knowledgeable than I on most matters Rosemary, corrects us both, that it’s in The Mark of the Horse Lord in a Dal Riada coronation ceremony.
Roseamary Sutcliff books at Foyles bookshop
Spotted yesterday at St Pancras station that Rosemary Sutcliff is recommended at Foyles. Not to be churlish, but about time too …
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 