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.

Author Penelope Lively remembers Rosemary Sutcliff

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

Writing in The Independent (UK newspaper) just after Rosemary Sutcliff‘s death in July 1992, English writer Penelope Lively commented on its obituary . She recalled a visit in the early 1970s to Rosemary’s house, Swallowshaw, in Sussex 27 July .

We sat in her study, she in her wheelchair behind the desk, the rest of us uneasily perched, (my) children – as they then were – awed into total silence. A housekeeper brought tea on a trolley: cucumber sandwiches and dainty little cakes. Two chihuahuas snarled from a cushion and occasionally shot out to snap at our ankles (on subsequent visits I learned how to deal them a surreptitious kick).Read More »

Rereading Rosemary Sutcliff | The Guardian

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

The Guardian newspaper continues to enthuse about Rosemary Sutcliff and her writing for children and adults.

Rereading: Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth | Books | The Guardian.

‘The Eagle’ Has Landed | The Spectator

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

‘The Eagle’ Has Landed | The Spectator.

Did The Eagle of the Ninth historical novelist Rosemary Sutcliff want to be a romantic novelist?

Anthony Lawton2 Comments

Rosemary Sutcliff‘s life and work in children’s, young adult, and adult literature, including The Eagle of the Ninth, was commented upon in 2003 by one of her editors on a website which I cannot now find (and I posted this first in April last year, 2010). She did have a “mystical communion with the past”, an “uncanny sense of place” and a rude sense of humour. But she certainly did not aspire to being a romantic novelist with books “full of sex”. Nor did she feel she had been “let down” by being “crippled by Stills disease”. And her best work was not only in the first half of her career; she had award-winning books up to the end of her life.

She wrote fine books after the 1950s and 1960s, for example the award-winning Song for a Dark Queen in the 1970s, The Shining Company in the 1980s (which won The USA’s Phoenix Award in 2010), and even her last manuscript Sword Song which was published after her death in the 1990s.Read More »

Lindsey Davis’s Top Ten Roman books includes The Eagle of the Ninth | The Guardian

Anthony Lawton1 Comment

The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff was in Lindsey Davis’s top ten Roman books in The Guardian in February 2009. Davis has written the Falco Roman detective novels.

“Somewhere about the year 117AD, the Ninth Legion, which was stationed at Eboracum, where York now stands, marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again.” Hooked? If not, there’s no hope for you. A wonderful novel, for children of all ages.

The full list of books was:

  1. Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jérôme Carcopino
  2. Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome by Lesley Adkins and Roy A Adkins
  3. Rome and Her Empire by Barry Cunliffe
  4. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide by Amanda Claridge
  5. The Colosseum by Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard
  6. Ancient Inventions by Peter James and Nick Thorpe
  7. The Lost World of Pompeii by Colin Amery and Brian Curran Jr
  8. Roman Britain by Keith Branigan.
  9. The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
  10. I, Claudius by Robert Graves