Rosemary Sutcliff, author of The Eagle of the Ninth now in the news as a ‘sword and sandals’ film (The Eagle of the Ninth!), was reviewed with affectionate insight by Veronica Horwell in The Guardian newspaper shortly after her death in 1992.
Rosemary Sutcliff did not spare the child, the raven and the wolf gorging on the battlefield dead. Read More »
Many people started reading Rosemary Sutcliff books in their youth and still re-visit them. Some have kindly posted comments around this blog. Today Jenny, commenting upon the pleasure of re-reading Rosemary Sutcliff, recalled some words from Frontier Wolf :
‘Lucius and his Gregorics!…He must know it by heart, but when Alexios had once said that to him, he had said in his quiet, rather serious way that he knew the taste of honey by heart, too, but it still tasted sweet on barley-bannock …’
“It was in the Great fire-hall on Barra, in the Outer Hebrides and a terrible storm was brewing up outside. They had just pulled the wicker-work shutters across the membrane of the windows in case the storm blew its way in, but the draughts were still getting in everywhere. Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff, author of The Eagle of the Ninth and The Mark of the Horse Lord, winner of The Library Association’s Carnegie Medal , is not spelt Rosemary Sutcliffe: this I have had to tell Bedford Borough and Central Bedfordshire Libraries Service in the UK. Yet they claim they ‘make every effort to maintain the accuracy of the information …’. Some effort. Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff once responded to a journalist’s suggestion that she made writing sound painless, even enjoyable, by shaking her head:
”No, it’s not really painless or enjoyable. Writing is perhaps just one degree less frightful than not writing!”
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 