The knight Bedevere, played by James Traherne in the RSC production of Morte D’Arthur, returns Arthur’s sword Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake after his final battle. He carries Arthur onto the barge that sails to Avalon after he is mortally wounded by Mordred. The RSC note that Bedevere appears in Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1963 best-selling Arthurian novel Sword at Sunset as Guenever’s lover, rather than Launcelot.
Category: Sword at Sunset
Posts at www.rosemarysutcliff.com on Sword at Sunset, the novel about King Arthur —in the form of an autobiography—by historical novelist Rosemary Sutcliff (1990-92)
Rosemary Sutcliff | An Unforgettable Writer of Fantasy and more| Sutcliff Review of the Week
Rosemary Sutcliff, children’s writer and historical novelist, is “unforgettable” to Keith Taylor, himself a writer, in a web article which reader of this blog Anne McFadgen has alerted me to (Thank you!). Her work, he writes, is “memorable'” because “decades after he has read her books scenes “from all of them come to my mind’s eye as vividly as if I’d seen them happen”. Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset | Sutcliff Book Review of the Week
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 (1920-92) 