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.

Legacy of Rosemary Sutcliff and The Eagle of the Ninth | Sandcastle or Temple to Mithras?

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

Rosemary Sutcliff relished the imagination and creativity of children, as well as readers’ responses to her novels. Writing in Books for Keeps, Brian Alderson, former Children’s Books Editor of The Times, recalled an anecdote which dates from some time after the publication of The Eagle of the Ninth in 1954. Rosemary recounted to a ‘bevy of librarians’:

‘That’s not a sand-castle,’ said the busy child on the beach, ‘I’m building a temple to Mithras’!

He commented that

In all probability the temple-builder’s enthusiasm for the work came from hearing its famed serialisation on ‘Children’s Hour’ but (perhaps unlike television serials) the wireless version sent listeners straight back to the book to get the author’s full-dress narrative to go with the spoken one.

Source: Classics in Short No.80

Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff

Anthony Lawton1 Comment

Blue Remembered Hills is Rosemary Sutcliff’s autobiography, covering the period until she was first published. Avid reader Lyn commented on her blog earlier this year:

It’s a beautifully written story of a lonely child crippled by juvenile arthritis who nevertheless didn’t feel she had had a deprived life. The tone of the book is one of gratitude for life’s blessings & joy at the natural world, her friends, her dogs & her love for her parents.

A customer and Amazon reviewer – intriguingly at one of the Universities in the town where I write this – wrote over ten years ago:  Read More »

Rosemary Sutcliff and the South Downs

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Award winning children’s novelist Rosemary Sutcliff lived most of her life in Sussex. Some of her stories are set in the county and mention the South Downs, a large protected area of Sussex countryside. I discovered that she is in the ‘featured writers’ section of www.southdownsonline.org, along with H.G Wells, Rudyard Kipling and Virginia Woolf.

For much of her adult life she lived in Walberton. The remains of Iron Age forts, Roman villas and Norman castles in the county inspired her to set many of her stories in Sussex.

Warrior Scarlet is set in the Iron Age. Some of the action takes place near Cissbury Ring. At one point, the hero, Drem, fails his test to become a warrior and is sent off to be a shepherd. Sheep on the Downs were looked after in a very similar way until about 100 years or so ago. The South Downs Society paid for the restoration of a traditional wheeled shepherd’s hut in 1980 and for a shepherd’s room in 1989, both at the Weald and Downland Museum.

In The Witch’s Brat the hero is thrown out of his tribe and walks along the South Downs to Winchester. Here he finds shelter in the New Minster, better known as Winchester Cathedral. He ends up in London where he helps with the setting up of St. Bartholomew’s hospital.

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920 – 1992) | “Historical writer of genius ” | Born today December 14th

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

From the cover of Rosemary Sutcliff's autobiography The Blue Remembered Hills

Was Rosemary Sutcliff in a wheelchair or wheelchair-bound?

Anthony Lawton1 Comment

One of the delights of Twitter is to follow such things as the Guardian newspaper style-guide (twitter.com/guardianstyle). But an entry today set me thinking about the confines of wheel-chairs, disability and how to use language.

The tweet read: “… say (if relevant) that someone uses a wheelchair, not is ‘in a wheelchair’ or ‘wheelchair-bound’ – (which is) stigmatising and inaccurate”. I am not so sure it is so simple, when I recall time spent with my godmother and cousin Rosemary Sutcliff – Romie, as I knew her –  and her attitude to her wheel-chair. She did consider herself bound by her wheelchair in some respects and would dearly like not to have been. Read More »