Rosemary Sutcliff describes a favourite dress of her mother’s

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I soon had a part-time nannie, who came in by the half-day. Her name was Ivy, and she had a squint and a black Spanish hat with a red rose under the brim… I thought it was the most beautiful hat I had ever seen.

Another result of my not being ill was that my mother now had much more social life. When she came to say goodnight to me in all her glory before going out to dinner, shew would be wearing a dress, short-skirted and with its waist round her hips, of pink and gold brocade; or one which I liked even better – almost as much as Ivy’s hat – which was black, held up by a narrow black ribbon over one shoulder and a string of coral beads over the other, and flashing a broad pleat lined with coral pink in the skirt, that appeared and disappeared as she moved. I could draw that dress now.

The intriguing blog  Clothes In Books quotes and reviews Rosemary Sutcliff’s Blue Remebered Hills, her  autobiography about the years before becoming  world-renowned historical novelist and writer of children’s literature. The blog reproduces a picture of opera singer, Lucrezia Bori (from the Dovima is Devine photostream) wearing such a dress as Rosemary describes so vividly.

Blue Remembered Hills related picture

Rosemary Sutcliff in List of Top 20 Living British Authors | The Times newspaper November 12th 1981

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Some thirty-two years ago almost to the day the Book Marketing Council published a list of who they judged to be the 20 greatest living British authors.  The Times – then (and now?) a paper of record – covered the group, but sadly mis-spelled Rosemary Sutcliff as Sutcliffe (sic) with an E. Of the twenty, only three are still alive, and sadly Rosemary  is not one of them.

The full list was Beryl Bainbridge (21 Nov 1932 – 2 July 2010), John Betjeman (28 Aug 1906 – 19 May 1984), Malcolm Bradbury (7 Sept 1932 – 27 Nov 2000), Anthony Burgess (25 Feb 1917 – 22 Nov 1993), Margaret Drabble (born 5 June 1939), Lawrence Durrell (27 Feb 1912 – 7 Nov 1990), John Fowles (31 Mar 1926 – 5 Nov 2005), Leon Garfield (14 Jul 1921 – 2 Jun 1996), William Golding (19 Sept 1911 – 19 Jun 1993), Graham Greene (2 Oct 1904 – 3 Apr 1991), Ted Hughes (17 Aug 1930 – 28 Oct 1998), John Le Carre (born 19 Oct 1931), Laurie Lee (26 June 1914 – 13 May 1997) , Rosamund Lehmann (3 Feb 1901 – 12 March 1990), Iris Murdoch (15 Jul 1919 – 8 Feb 1999) , V.S. Naipaul (b. 17 Aug 1932), V.S Pritchett (16 Dec 1900 – 20 Mar 1997. Rosemary Sutcliffe (sic) (14 Dec 1920 – 23 Jul 1992), Laurens Van de Post (13 Dec 1906 – 16 Dec 1996), Rebecca West  (21 Dec 1892 – 15 Mar 1983).

Article from The Times newspaper on top 20 20th century living authors at circa 1980

Longlist announced for The Carnegie (Children’s Book) Medal for 2014 | Rosemary Sutcliff was winner in 1957 and runner-up in 1972

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Nominations were announced today for the Carnegie Medal for 2014. The Chartered institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) claims (correctly!) that it is one of the “most prestigious prizes in writing … for children”, but regretfully I have read none of this year’s nominees – yet! The medal is awarded annually by children’s librarians for an outstanding book for children and young people. The press release from CILIP recalls that “previous winners of the medal include Sally Gardener, Patrick Ness, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman and C.S. Lewis”.

Rosemary Sutcliff was awarded the medal in 1957 for her historical novel The Lantern Bearers. She was short-listed again in 1972 for Tristan and Iseult .

Source: The CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards – Press Release 

Cover of Japanese edition of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Light beyond the Forest

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I love the cover page of the Japanese edition of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Light Beyond the Forest. Intriguingly, of course,  to this British reader, the cover is  ‘at the back’ of the book. Not at all what Japanese lovers of the books of Rosemary Sutcliff in their own language would think.

Cover of Japanese edition of RS The Light Beyond the Forest

Japanese cover The Light Beyond the Forest.

In praise of historical and children’s novelist Rosemary Sutcliff | A Guardian newspaper editorial in 2011

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I am reminded by a tweet I noticed today that Rosemary Sutcliff was praised in an editorial in the Guardian newspaper in 2011.

Rosemary Sutcliff‘s 1954 children’s classic The Eagle of the Ninth (still in print more than 50 years on) is the first of a series of novels in which Sutcliff, who died in 1992, explored the cultural borderlands between the Roman and the British worlds – “a place where two worlds met without mingling” as she describes the British town to which Marcus, the novel’s central character, is posted.  

Marcus is a typical Sutcliff hero, a dutiful Roman who is increasingly drawn to the British world of “other scents and sights and sounds; pale and changeful northern skies and the green plover calling”. This existential cultural conflict gets even stronger in later books like The Lantern Bearers and Dawn Wind, set after the fall of Rome, and has modern resonance. But Sutcliff was not just a one-trick writer.

The range of her novels spans from the Bronze Age and Norman England to the Napoleonic wars. Two of her best, The Rider of the White Horse and Simon, are set in the 17th century and are marked by Sutcliff’s unusually sympathetic (for English historical novelists of her era) treatment of Cromwell and the parliamentary cause. Sutcliff’s finest books find liberal-minded members of elites wrestling with uncomfortable epochal changes. From Marcus Aquila to Simon Carey, one senses, they might even have been Guardian readers.