For award-winning, internationally-acclaimed author Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92). By Anthony Lawton: godson, cousin & literary executor. Rosemary Sutcliff wrote historical fiction, children's literature and books, films, TV & radio, including The Eagle of the Ninth, Sword at Sunset, Song for a Dark Queen, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Silver Branch, The Lantern Bearers, Dawn Wind, Blue Remembered Hills.
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.
Sword at Sunset, a historical novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, was reviewed in 1987 by a reader who described himself as a ‘recovering chemical engineer’:
“… Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset stands out for its raw emotion and storyline stripped down to the essentials … This novel makes other versions, no matter how much fantasy and magic are injected, pallid by comparison. Other authors have recreated a gritty, realistic Arthur since Sutcliff introduced the idea more than forty years ago, but this first attempt at that take on the Arthurian legend still stands out as the best”. (Eric Eller in Greenman Review)
Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels, including The Eagle of the Ninth (now a film/movie) and The Lantern Bearers, are classics of both children’s literature and historical fiction. Some novels, like The Flowers of Adonis, and some retellings such as Black Ships Before Troy are set in Ancient Greece. But according to one book review:
“Children’s literature does not feature much in classical studies, as classicists tend not to distinguish between literature written for children and literature that children happen to read’.Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Mark of the Horse Lord, a historical novel with illustrations by Charles Keeping, is loved by many people, including Channing Tatum, star of the film of The Eagle of the Ninth.
He hadn’t understood it, then. He did not really understand now–his head only knew that when it had to be one or the other, there was not much else you could do but pay away your own life for the Tribe’s. But something deep within him understood that it was not only among those who had followed the dark, ancient ways of the Earth Mother that the King died for the People; only among the Sun People the King himself chose when the time was come. (From The Mark of the Horse Lord, quoted by The Children’s Book Quote of the Day
Rosemary Sutcliff, distinguished writer of children’s books and historical fiction, was rightly described as ‘impish’ and ‘irreverent’ by The Guardian when she died. But partly because she was playful, she was a learner all her life.
“When the playful me shows up, I am ready to be a serious learner … a culture of playfulness is closely related to the capacity to learn.”
As a long article about elsewhere has alluded to, Rosemary Sutcliff book The Capricorn Bracelet used the technique, also used by Rudyard Kipling, of inter-connected short stories. The stories are connected by a family heirloom passed down through successive generations of a Roman military family serving in northern Britain at Hadrian’s wall: the bracelet of the title is for distinguished conduct awarded by the Second Legion, known as the II Augusta, and inscribed with the legion’s capricorn emblem. Read More »
Sword at Sunset, a historical novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, was reviewed in 1987 by a reader who described himself as a ‘recovering chemical engineer’:
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 