Rosemary Sutcliff loved by Twittering US-based ex-UK Conservative MP Louise Mensch
Beautiful edition of Rosemary Sutcliff’s Autobiography | Blue Remembered Hills
Slightly Foxed is, in their own words, “a rather unusual quarterly book review”, as I posted last year. It professes to be “unaffected by the winds of fashion and the hype of the big publishers” as it introduces readers to “some of the thousands of good books that long ago disappeared from the review pages and often from bookshop shelve.” “Companionable and unstuffy”, its contributors – some well-known, others not – all write “personally and entertainingly about the books they choose”. It appeals to me that it is “not so much a review magazine as a magazine of enthusiasms – some of them quite quirky”.
In the autumn of 2011 they launched a new paperback series, putting into paperback those Slightly Foxed Editions that have now sold out. I remain delighted that Rosemary Sutcliff’s autobiography Blue Remembered Hills was released. It is pocket-sized and very elegantly produced.
The first day of spring but I don’t feel Spring-like in the least | Rosemary Sutcliff Diary | March 1st, 1991
This year, I shall post occasionally random excerpts on random days from Rosemary Sutcliff’s diary (last year for a while I did daily reproductions). From March 1st 1991:
The day which, most years, means the start of spring to me. But it is such a grey, miserable day and my ears, which I thought recovered from my cold, so bad again, that I don’t feel Spring-like in the least.
Illustration of The Old Woman by John Vernon Lord | from Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset
An illustration by John Vernon Lord for Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset, Edito-Service Geneva, 1975. Reproduced at the blog johnvernonlord.blogspot.co.uk a couple of days ago.
Rosemary Sutcliff On Changing the Ending of Stories and Songs
A quotation from Rosemary Sutcliff at the goodreads site – unfortunately without a reference (does anyone know it?) – gave me pause for thought as I reflected upon the changed ending to the story of The Eagle of the Ninth for the film The Eagle. Perhaps that is a reason after all to celebrate that the film was not (in English) called The Eagle of the Ninth. But perhaps also I should not have been so sanguine about the changed ending when asked to comment by the press when the film came out a couple of years ago now. In any event, this is a thought-provoking note on which to re-energise this blog, now that I am six months into my stint with a new day-job! To regulars….apologies for the silence….and to commenters….apologies for some long delays in approving so that comments are published.
“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 