Rosemary Sutcliff often said she wrote “for children aged 8 to 88” or sometimes “9 to 90”. She once said:
“The themes of my children’s books are mostly quite adult, and in fact the difference between writing for children and for adults is, to me at any rate, only a quite small gear change.”
It is a change of gear clearly beyond author Martin Amis! Read More »
The film The Eagle, based on Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth was released yesterday in the USA and Canada, and of course I (as well as the film-makers) are anxious to see what people make of it. Speakeasy is a Wall Street Journal site covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. It is produced by a senior editor with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others.
They review the reviews:
What do you get when you hire a first-rate director to helm an old-fashioned swords-and-sandals movie? A “rip-snortin’” adventure, in the words of Roger Ebert. Indeed, critics are generally taking to “The Eagle,” which was directed by Kevin Macdonald (”The Last King of Scotland”) and stars Channing Tatum as a square-jawed Roman soldier.Mercifully, “The Eagle” also contains no CGI. Points for that alone. Read what other critics are saying. Read More »
For those of you in North America who have found your way to this blog after watching The Eagle film based on Rosemary Sutcliff‘s great story The Eagle of the Ninth, the publishers (and I!) invite you to check out the reissue of the entire Roman Britain Trilogy from Square Fish! You can experience “the guts and glory with the movie tie-in edition of The Eagle of the Ninth” and “get the conversation started with their discussion guide“.
Well, here we are. Today is the big day, and we can start finding out what you all – well those of you in North America – think of the film The Eagle. To mark the day I am re-reading the actual book The Eagle of the Ninth! Many, many thanks to Duncan Kenworthy the producer and the team he assembled to bring Rosemary Sutcliff’s book lovingly to the big screen.
See now, for a good blade, one that will not betray the man in battle, rods of hard and soft iron must be heated and braided together. Then is the blade folded over and hammered flat again, and maybe yet again, many times for the finest blades … So the hard and soft iron are mingled without blending, before the blade is hammered up to its finished form and tempered, and ground to an edge that shall draw blood from the wind. So comes the pattern, like oil and water that mingle but do not mix. Yet it is the strength of the blade, for without the hard iron the blade would bend in battle, and without the soft iron it would break.
Source: Goodreads quotations from Rosemary Sutcliff
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 
