Many people started reading Rosemary Sutcliff books in their youth and still re-visit them. Some have kindly posted comments around this blog. Today Jenny, commenting upon the pleasure of re-reading Rosemary Sutcliff, recalled some words from Frontier Wolf :
‘Lucius and his Gregorics!…He must know it by heart, but when Alexios had once said that to him, he had said in his quiet, rather serious way that he knew the taste of honey by heart, too, but it still tasted sweet on barley-bannock …’
“It was in the Great fire-hall on Barra, in the Outer Hebrides and a terrible storm was brewing up outside. They had just pulled the wicker-work shutters across the membrane of the windows in case the storm blew its way in, but the draughts were still getting in everywhere. Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff, author of The Eagle of the Ninth and The Mark of the Horse Lord, winner of The Library Association’s Carnegie Medal , is not spelt Rosemary Sutcliffe: this I have had to tell Bedford Borough and Central Bedfordshire Libraries Service in the UK. Yet they claim they ‘make every effort to maintain the accuracy of the information …’. Some effort. Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff once responded to a journalist’s suggestion that she made writing sound painless, even enjoyable, by shaking her head:
”No, it’s not really painless or enjoyable. Writing is perhaps just one degree less frightful than not writing!”
Two Rosemary Sutcliff titles are available in Welsh. Since I am temporarily working up here in Bangor in North Wales, heart of Welsh-speaking Wales, it seems right – indeed essential – to recall an older post and note that Cwchwlin Penarwr Iwerddon (The Hound of Ulster), and Merch y Pennaeth (The Chief’s Daughter). Author G R Grove, who wrote Storyteller, Flight of the Hawk, and The Ash Spear reminded me of these editions.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 