Listening to a fascinating interview with David Hockney on radio with Andrew Marr. (On BBC Radio 4). He describes himself as a “picture maker”. It immediately made me think that I am wrong always to say that Rosemary was a ‘story teller’. She was a story maker.
Category: Autobiography & Biography
Posts on the rosemarysutcliff.com weblog about the life and thoughts of Rosemary Sutcliff, including what she wrote and said about writing and her own craft.
Interview in 1991 with Rosemary Sutcliff by John Withrington about Sword at Sunset and Arthurian legend
I have found a new (to me) interview snippet and will be chasing the full interview. (Any of you readers and contributors got access?)
Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Lantern Bearers | Folio Society edition a Christmas present for friends or family?
The Folio Society’s beautiful version of Rosemary Sutcliff’s award-winning historical novel The Lantern Bearers is the latest of their wonderful reproductions of Rosemary Sutcliff novels. Perhaps a fitting present for someone this Christmas – it can be ordered online?
Winner of the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 1957, The Lantern Bearers is, in some people’s eyes, the best and most thoughtful of Rosemary Sutcliff’s Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles. Penelope Lively’s, who knew Rosemary well, and spoke at the memorial service we organised for her way back in 1992, has written a special new introduction. She comments:
It is a work of her maturity, one in which she had already honed all her signature skills – her power of narrative, of pace, her way with characters, the rich evocations of a Britain that is gone but that she had recreated. It is full of the creamy surf of meadowsweet alongside crimson cloaks flying in the wind …
This edition is illustrated by the award-winning Russian artist, Roman Pisarev.
Source: The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Folio Society.
Rosemary Sutcliff’s beautiful miniature nativity scene | Christmas
Christmas preparations and celebrations are upon us. I am reminded of a post by my son last year:
Before Rosemary Sutcliff became I writer, she was an artist. She made beautiful miniatures. One of her set of miniatures is a stunning nativity scene. As Rosemary was my dad’s Godmother and cousin, we inherited some of her possessions when she died in 1992. The nativity scene was one of those possessions and every Christmas we put it out next to the christmas tree in the front hall of our family home in Leicester. Here are some photographs my wife took … of this beautiful piece of art.
Rosemary Sutcliff on Desert Island Discs in 1983
Rosemary Sutcliff was on Desert Island Discs on the BBC with Roy Plomley in 1983, before she had written all her 50+ books. I am hoping that eventually the BBC will post the recording itself. Then you would hear her and her reasons for her choice of eight pieces of music to take to her desert island shipwreck.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 