Rosemary Sutcliff was the subject of a fascinating article entitled ‘Of The Minstrel Kind’ in the excellent  Books for Keeps – the children’s book magazine. Margaret Meek was paying tribute to Rosemary as she reached seventy. I was reminded of it when I read The Guardian editorial in praise of Rosemary the other day.

I met Rosemary Sutcliff for the first time thirty years ago in a London hospital where she was recovering from an operation. She was already famous; The Eagle of the Ninth had seen to that. Published in 1954 it had been reprinted four times. It’s probably still the book by which she is best known: an historical novel about the Romans in Britain, the first of a group of stories including The Lantern Bearers which won for her the Carnegie Medal.

Although I was nervous at that first encounter I was much more worried about seeming impertinent. I’d agreed to write about the novels for a Bodley Head Monograph, one of a series of essays about well-known writers for children, to which Rosemary Sutcliff had already contributed a fine example about Rudyard Kipling. It wasn’t so easy in those days to be curious about a famous author, especially one who had had a long childhood illness, who went to school for the first time at nine and learned to read even later, and who finished her compulsory education ‘mercifully early’ at fourteen. Read More »