Trawling the internet, researching libraries and databases, and occasionally from material sent to me, I discover things I did not know much about, or indeed at all! There can be more than one Discovery of the Day.
It has probably been long forgotten, indeed unknown to most people, including current staff at her publishers Hodder and Stoughton, that around 1970 they published The Hodder and Stoughton Library of Great Historical Novels, chosen by Rosemary Sutcliff. One was Scent of Cloves by Norah Lofts (first published in 1958). At the end of her introduction, Rosemary Sutcliff wrote:
This is a very difficult book to write about. Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff listed what she called ‘assorted’ titles in her own hand in her blue record book ( a Challenge notebook!).
His parents, watching their son grow increasingly miserable in public school, enrolled him (Luke Hayes-Alexander, now of Luke’s Gastronomy in Toronto, Canada) at Sempar, a small private school that provided a classical education. At the school, the boy encountered for the first time a passion for learning that matched his own. He studied Beowulf and Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels about Roman Britain; his class acted out the parts in Julius Caesar. Computers were available but rarely turned on. Each week, students were escorted to the local public library to borrow as many books as they could carry.
Lindsey Davis writes detective novels set in classical Rome, featuring the world of maverick private eye and poet Falco. On the publication in 2009 of the nineteenth of what became a bestselling series of novels known for their meticulous historical detail, she chose Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth as one of her top ten Roman books.
‘Somewhere about the year 117AD, the Ninth Legion, which was stationed at Eboracum, where York now stands, marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again.’ Hooked? If not, there’s no hope for you. A wonderful novel, for children of all ages.
via Lindsey Davis’s top 10 Roman books | Books | guardian.co.uk
Writing at the Guardian Children’s Books site, Tony Bradman selected Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1954 historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth as one of the best stories ‘featuring fathers and sons’.
The Eagle of the Ninth was published in 1954, the year I was born, but I must have read it for the first time when I was 12 or 13, just after my Tolkien phase. Like many other Sutcliff fans, I was gripped by this story of a young man travelling from the soft south of Roman Britain to the wilds beyond Hadrian’s Wall where the Scots were still very independent indeed. Marcus Flavius Aquila is on a mission to find out what happened to his father’s legion, the 9th Hispana, which marched north into the Caledonian mists and was never seen again. Read More »
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 