Rosemary Sutcliff was an internationally renowned writer of historical novels, for children, young adults and adults. She also wrote stories for children. This category compiles the posts on this blog by title.
The Eagle of the Ninth film summary – plot based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s book The Eagle of the Ninth – described by one of its co-financiers, Film 4.
Newly arrived in Britannia on his first command, young Centurion Marcus Aquila (Tatum) heroically defends his fort against a massive Celtic attack but is so badly wounded that he is discharged from the army. Angry and bitter that his army career is over, Read More »
The Eagle film (formerly to be called The Eagle of the Ninth) has excellent fight and battle scenes, it is suggested on Twitter:
“I was doing ADR work on The Eagle of the Ninth– some of those battle sequences are jaw-droppingly good …” (Nils Hognestad on Twitter)
I have learned since posting this originally that ADR stands for ‘Automated Dialogue Replacement’. Read More »
Sword at Sunset, a historical novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, was reviewed in 1987 by a reader who described himself as a ‘recovering chemical engineer’:
“… Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset stands out for its raw emotion and storyline stripped down to the essentials … This novel makes other versions, no matter how much fantasy and magic are injected, pallid by comparison. Other authors have recreated a gritty, realistic Arthur since Sutcliff introduced the idea more than forty years ago, but this first attempt at that take on the Arthurian legend still stands out as the best”.
(Eric Eller in Greenman Review)
Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels, including The Eagle of the Ninth (now a film/movie) and The Lantern Bearers, are classics of both children’s literature and historical fiction. Some novels, like The Flowers of Adonis, and some retellings such as Black Ships Before Troy are set in Ancient Greece. But according to one book review:
“Children’s literature does not feature much in classical studies, as classicists tend not to distinguish between literature written for children and literature that children happen to read’.Read More »
As a long article about elsewhere has alluded to, Rosemary Sutcliff book The Capricorn Bracelet used the technique, also used by Rudyard Kipling, of inter-connected short stories. The stories are connected by a family heirloom passed down through successive generations of a Roman military family serving in northern Britain at Hadrian’s wall: the bracelet of the title is for distinguished conduct awarded by the Second Legion, known as the II Augusta, and inscribed with the legion’s capricorn emblem. Read More »
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 