I am always intrigued to see where views come from, especially those with small numbers.
Writer, journalist, and very knowledgeable Rosemary Sutcliff critic Amanda Craig has lost her job as children’s book reviewer at the Times newspaper. The role is to be brought “in-house”.
“Children’s literature is one of Britain’s greatest national treasures and it’s not something you can hope to cover well in-house,” she told The Bookseller for their article covering her firing.
Around the time of the release of the film The Eagle (of the Ninth) based upon the best-selling The Eagle of the Ninth she wrote about the “rediscovery” of “this great writer”. I am with the comments of living writers reported in the Bookseller:
Neil Gaiman said he was “enormously disappointed” by the decision to lose her, calling her “a perceptive champion of children’s books”. Francesca Simon said Craig had been one of her early champions and called the newspaper “crazy to lose her expertise”.
Let us hope Amanda moves, as she hopes, to another national “with a more far-sighted vision of how readers are made”.
Author Joanne Harris ( @Joannechocolat on Twitter) this morning tweeted a lovely story (#storytime) involving a rocking-horse. It put me in mind of Rosemary Sutcliff’s horse Troubador – made for her by a rocking-horse maker in Sussex – which prances still in our hall. And of Rosemary’s story for children, The Roundabout Horse.
The full story, extracted from the stream of Tweets this morning, follows:Read More »
Historian, writer and journalist Christina Hardyment reflected on Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff in response to the anniversary edition of Sutcliff’s Arthurian adult novel – an ‘odd one out’.
Rosemary Sutcliff is most famed for The Eagle of the Ninth, but there was much more to her than that. In the 1950s, historically-minded children found her books a magic carpet into the past. I began with Brother Dusty-feet (1952) and The Armourer’s House (1951), and never looked back an insatiable interest in history has remained the backbone of my life.
In 1954, The Eagle of the Ninth introduced Marcus Flavius Aquila, a young Roman who chooses to stay in Britain after the legions leave. Seven subsequent books follow his family’s fate, usually directly. The odd book out is the fifth, Sword at Sunset, now published in a new edition to celebrate its 50th birthday. In 1963, it was firmly announced to be for adults, and given the (for their time) graphic and violent scenes of sex and slaughter, it deserved to be.
A new Random House print-on-demand edition of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Chronicles of Robin Hood is now available. The story was Rosemary Sutcliff’s first with OUP, in 1950. The cover, unlike the book, is not exciting – but it reflects the generic design for Random’s print-on-demand editions. The important point is that the book can be acquired for another generation of readers.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 