Category: The Eagle of the Ninth

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

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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!

First Edition | Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth

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Well, they don’t make’em like they used to. I love the smell of old books and the way the pages feel. This edition is especially interesting due to the striking illustration by C. Walter Hodges.

1st edition of The Eagle of the Ninth

What happened to the Roman Ninth Legion? Rosemary Sutcliff may have been right! Or not wrong …

Anthony Lawton4 Comments

I learned yesterday from some history documentary makers who were interested in Rosemary Sutcliff, her life and ideas, that more evidence may be coming to light about the Ninth Legion’s fate. Recall this is an element of The Eagle of the Ninth story. Rosemary’s instincts for a great story as told in The Eagle of the Ninth were based on (then) contemporary historical research. I find it especially pleasing (as a non-specialist and perhaps biased relative) to learn this – after in recent years some commentators have, in the eyes of others only on limited evidence and to limited dissent –  disputed the idea of the ninth legion disappearing in Britain at all. A new TV programme next year purports, its makers tell me,  to “reveal how Rosemary and fans of the book and her take on history can look forward to complete vindication”. She needs no vindication; but it would be pleasing and to me not at all surprising to find her imaginative leap once again in line with where the ‘evidence’ and (some) historians’ interpretations may be taking us!

(Post slightly amended, twice,  from original in light of most interesting comment below from Robert Vermaat, to be a little more measured! But I write as a relative not an academic or other specialist, so hope I am allowed a little licence for passion! This I am sure will run and run, here and elsewhere?)

Sword-and-Sandal gamer sees trailer and anticipates The Eagle film

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

Peter Callela recalls Rosemary Sutcliff’s “wonderful, classic  The Eagle of the Ninth” and notes that now the new film The Eagle will be released in the USA on February 11, 2011.  (It will be mid-March in the UK: please let me know anyone who knows timing in other countries). He writes that “ever since word got out that this adaption was being produced, I’ve been excited about seeing how Sutcliff’s literary material gets translated to the screen, and now that the official trailer has been released, it looks like there is reason to be optimistic.Read More »

Rosemary Sutcliff a favourite author of Philip Reeve

Anthony Lawton1 Comment

The Eagle of the Ninth and Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff are two of best-selling author and illustrator Philip Reeve‘s favourite books, as recounted  on his own website.

… or I could have chosen Knight’s Fee, or The Lantern Bearers, or Sun-horse, Moon-horse, or Frontier Wolf…  Rosemary Sutcliff is one of my favourite children’s authors, and I doubt she ever wrote a bad book, but these were the two I liked best when I was growing up. Read More »