I have been researching Rosemary Sutcliff’s ancestors as well as my own, indeed they overlap because Rosemary’s mother was my grandfather’s sister. This is what I think her tree looks like as far as I have got at present.
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.
Rosemary Sutcliff on writing the story of King Arthur
Historical and children’s fiction author Rosemary Sutcliff wrote a book for adults (as opposed to children) about King Arthur – Sword at Sunset – a best seller in the UK in 1963. She said twenty years later:
I had determined from the time that I was very young that there was a real person there, and that I would love to find and reconstruct that person. […] Most of the actual research I did for the book (Sword at Sunset), apart from knowing the Arthurian story from the romance versions, was into Dark Age life and history as far as they were known. Then I worked into this setting the Arthur who seemed to me to carry weight, to be the most likely kind of person. It was very strange because I have never written a book which was so possessive. It was extraordinary–almost frightening. […] I would take the book to bed with me at night, and work there until I dropped off to sleep about two o’clock in the morning, too tired to see any more. Then I would wake up about six o’clock, still thinking about it. It was addictive. It was almost like having the story fed through to me, at times. I do my writing usually in three drafts, and I would go from the first to the second draft, from the second to the third, and find bits of the book that I had no recollection of having written at all.
Source: From Raymond H. Thompson’s interview with Rosemary Sutcliff in August 1986
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Jamie Jauncey cries over ‘wise and humane’ Rosemary Sutcliff, in India
Yesterday evening I raised my glass to Rosemary Sutcliff. It was an odd moment. I was sitting on my own in the restaurant on the sixth floor of the Leela Kempinski Hotel in Gurgaon (just outside New Delhi, India), overlooking what my driver had proudly told me earlier in the week is the largest road toll in Asia (Ay-zee-a, he pronounced it), sixteen lanes of winking red tail lights, sixteen lanes of unblinking white headlights; and she had made me cry.
Read the full, lovely post and other writing at Jamie Jauncey’s blog A Few Kind Words. Or read it here (reproduced with permission)…..Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff and ‘The Eagle’ landed in The Spectator
Before heading off to Australia for a few weeks, I wrote about Rosemary Sutcliff and The Eagle at The Spectator Arts Blog. I hope they will not mind me reproducing it here:
This is a good spring for Rosemary Sutcliff: it sees the release of the film The Eagle, which is based on her bestselling 1954 novel The Eagle of the Ninth, which is set in Roman Britain. Were the book published for the first time this year, it might be promoted as a ‘young adult novel’. But that was not an available category in 1954. The novel was promoted as a children’s book, and reviewed as a significant contribution to children’s literature.
It has become a classic of children’s literature, Read More »
BBC – Desert Island Discs – Castaway: Rosemary Sutcliff
In conversation with Roy Plomley, on October 1st 1983 Rosemary Sutcliff talked on the famous Desert Island Discs radio programme about her career and about the difficulties caused by arthritis since she was a child. She chose the eight records that she would take to the mythical island.
She also chose her book: Kim by Rudyard Kipling. And her luxury: flowers delivered daily by bottle.
All this courtesy of the new BBC Desert Island Discs archives – but sadly not (yet?) the archive of the programme itself.
via BBC – Desert Island Discs – Castaway : Rosemary Sutcliff.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 