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.

A Rosemary Sutcliff Style Guide?

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

Rosemary Sutcliff was my personal ‘style guide’ when she was alive. (She would have been 90 years old last week). I remember her berating me frequently for a far too ready use of commas, let alone for contorted sentences like this …

For many years since her death in 1992  I have used The Guardian Style Guide. I started to read it today at ‘A’, thinking about entries that might have overlapped with a Rosemary Sutcliff Style Guide. Thus, extracted from many entries under the letter ‘A’ in the Guardian guide:

  • abbeys are, like cathedrals, with capitals: Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral, etc
  • abscess
  • achilles heel
  • AD, BC: AD goes before the date (AD64), BC goes after (300BC); both go after the century, eg second century AD, fourth century BC
  • adviser not advisor
  • affect/effect: exhortations in the style guide had no effect (noun) on the number of mistakes; the level of mistakes was not affected (verb) by exhortations in the style guide; we hope to effect (verb) a change in this
  • aide-de-camp , plural aides-de-camp (aide is a noun)
  • Read More »

The Eagle new UK film poster | Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell | Rosemary Sutcliff Discovery of the Day

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

New poster for the film of The Eagle of the Ninth

Animal furs for freezing weather | Rosemary Sutcliff Discovery of the Day

domcoyoteLeave a comment

Here is another cover of Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic children’s novel, The Eagle of the Ninth.

It’s the 1986 English edition. The cover shows the ninth legion marching with animal furs to keep them warm in the freezing British weather. I could do with one of those now! Some things haven’t changed in 2,000 years.

The Eagle of the Ninth in Swedish | Rosemary Sutcliff Discovery of the Day

domcoyoteLeave a comment

Here is another of cover of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth. It is the Swedish version from 1993.

Inside, there is a map of Britain, showing the Latin names of the largest settlements of Roman Britain. This is slightly different to the map shown in English versions of the book. One thing I find intriguing is the Latin name for Scotland. In the English version, it is written as Caledonia. However, in the Swedish version it is written as Caledonien. I wonder why? If Caledonia is from the Latin language, is Caledonien Swedish/Latin? The word Britannia also differs here. It is written as Britannien. However, other names of settlements remain in conventional Latin.
I wonder why the translations differ. Any ideas?

Eagle book sleeves | Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth

domcoyoteLeave a comment

Rosemary Sutcliff was my dad’s Godmother. In my family home in Leicester, many of Rosemary’s books line the shelves. They are printed in dozens of different languages, from first editions to last.

Rosemary’s most celebrated book is The Eagle of the Ninth. It is now in it’s fiftieth edition. I asked my wife to take some photographs of all the different covers of the book we could find with her new camera. I will be posting these photographs over the next few weeks, in a completely random order.

The first post is the 1959 Canadian edition, printed by The T. H. Best Printing Company Limited. The back drop to the book is our garden, covered in snow. It’s freezing here!