Some books form Rosemary Sutcliff‘s library as we head for World Book Day. First, today, Forest Fairies, verses by Marion St John Webb, pictures by Margaret W Tarrant. Published by the Modern Art Society.
Category: General
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.
Colm Tóibín dislikes being called a storyteller
Rosemary Sutcliff used to describe herself, happily, as a teller of stories. I frequently speak of her as a story-teller, and sometimes as story-maker; and I have assumed that any writer would be pleased to be called a storyteller. But I was wrong: this is Colm Tóibín in The Guardian last week.
I dislike being called a storyteller, and resent the implication that I come from a world where the oral tradition, something primitive and unformed, remained strong or intact. This was not true; the oral tradition was not strong in the place where I grew up. I was brought up in a house where there was a great deal of silence. When my father died, his name was hardly ever mentioned again. It was too much that he had died, too hard; his absence was too palpable, too sad. So it entered the realm of what you thought about and did not speak of, a realm I remain very comfortable in to this day.
Source: Colm Tóibín: writers and their families | The Guardian.
Dedication of Brother Dusty Feet by Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary Sutcliff dedicated Brother Dusty Feet (on BBC Radio 4 extra, starting this week) to my grandfather, Harold Lawton, who lived in Parkstone, Dorset.
Maids when you’re young never wed an old man!
Regular readers of this weblog about historical novelist and children’s writer Rosemary Sutcliff will know my original connection is by way of being close family. Rosemary helped engender my love of traditional folk-music and ballads; but in time she had to suffer listening to my repertoire … (Actually Midland Red in the late 1970s around Leicestershire were not too shabby!) One English song I used to perform was “Maids when your young, never wed an old man”. Perhaps Rosemary would have enjoyed as much as I this award-winning rendition by the excellent Lucy Ward? (For all you traditional folk-music enthusiasts, Rosemary and I shared a love of the singing of Pete Bellamy of The Young Tradition: she because of his affection for Rudyard Kipling; I, having heard the great farewell concert for TYT at Cecil Sharp House aged about sixteen on an expedition from school with the ‘Progressive Music Society’ (sic).)
For the lyrics: Read More »
Most moving novel about Richard III | Rosemary Sutcliff on Some Touch of Pity
Jane Stemp commented on a previous post that she was reminded that she “once read a book by Rhoda Edwards which is about Richard III – and dedicated to Rosemary Sutcliff. The title is ‘Some Touch of Pity’. Courtesy of the internet I found a picture of a cover, and it includes a quote from Rosemary, calling the novel “the most moving novel about Richard III I have ever read”.
UK original publication details are: Rhoda Edwards, Some Touch of Pity. Hutchinson , London, 1976. In the US it was published as The Broken Sword. A brief internet trawl produces this review from the Richard III Society of New South Wales, in Australia. Read More »
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 