This page is to help me gather material about Rosemary Sutcliff, historical novelist, writer of children’s books and fiction for young adults; and for you to take part, should you wish!
Posts made because of contact from this page or by email include:
- Rosemary Sutcliff influenced and inspired … Australian writer Keith Taylor
- Rosemary Sutcliff Dutch Translations
- Rosemary Sutcliff influenced and inspired … Reading University lecturer Matthew Nicholls
You might use this page to send me copies of reviews, or links to your own or other people’s material that you think might interest me and the increasing number of visitors to this blog. What have you read of Rosemary’s or about her or her work? What did you enjoy? Why? Would you recommend it to others? Have you recommended it? Who to ? Was your career (if you have one) or life influenced by Rosemary Sutcliff or her books at all? Anything else you want to suggest I put here about her? Do you have advice on improving this site and especially on fostering a network of the many people interested in Rosemary or touched by her in her lifetime or since? Anybody in particular to connect with for some reason? I look forward to hearing from some of you
Thank you! Anthony Lawton
a(dot)g(dot)lawton(at)gmail(dot)com
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 
I enjoyed this. Thank you.
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I’ve always been fascinated by Rosemary Sutcliffs ability to bring the world of Roman Britain vividly before your very eyes! On my part it’s also the ears, really…
It all started when I came across a copy of “The Mark of the Horselord”. Since then I’ve been hearing the soundtrack for a film that has not been produced yet. As a matter of fact I’ve started to write that music down; as a first short result I’d like to share a little video I’ve made (containing some bagpipe music, too, though I didn’t know it was Rosemary’s favourite instrument!).
Also without a film, the whole project will make a nice CD some day; just enjoy and watch out for more!
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I only read two of her books when I was young, Beowulf and The High Deeds of Finn McCool. I really enjoyed these, especially the latter. Right now I am reading Eagle of the Ninth after discovering it in the library. Sutcliff is just as good as I remembered her from when I was young. I am exploring this website very carefully to avoid spoilers. I am pleased to see that a movie is being made, and the edition of the book I am reading also mentions that it was made into a BBC TV series. I wonder if that is available on DVD.
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Thank you so much for commenting here – and keep enjoying TEOTN. Sadly there is no DVD that I am aware of. (I am new to blogging – what do you mean about spoiler?)
All the best
Anthony
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Spoiler is not strictly a blogging term. It just means any information about the plot especially the ending.
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The opening of The Hound of Ulster, Rosemary’s retelling of the Cuchulain legends, is one of her greatest pieces, I think.
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I’ll not have the ability at 5:00 am in NorCal (CA) to really sum up all my thoughts about Rosemary Sutcliff. Little things really, the rose that eventually fell to the ground, summoning up the end of Marcus’s hopes of returning to the Legions, the dreadfully hard decision in The Silver Branch, I think, of whether to stay in Britain or return to Rome, or the painful reconciliation between brother and sister after the sister had been taken by the invading Barbarians.
Sutcliff, through her interlocking stories, shows Britain changing through the centuries, embracing new peoples and ways while always holding fast to a core set of beliefs. That sounds so dry and she is anything but. When I try to explain her to someone, I talk about the struggle between the light and the dark. The idea that a light, a belief, can be so strong as to change a life. Or I tell them that her characters are often not “whole” but that their struggles to become what they were born to be makes them whole.
All of my children, now 20 (girl), 22 & 29 (boy), have written about The Eagle of the Ninth for their first major school book reports — and it is a credit to Sutcliff that that experience did not ruin their love of her books.
I’m terrified that the upcoming movie with not do justice to Sutcliff’s masterpiece but it really doesn’t matter. When I stood on Hadrian’s Wall for the first time a few years back it was Sutcliff that was in my head.
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… pretty good for 5.00am, it seems to me! Thank you so much for your comment. I am hopeful about the film: the producer, director and writer as well as starts Jamie Bell and Channing Tatum are passionate about the story and Rosemary Sutcliff; and they understand the essence of the story that Rosemary told while appreciating that a film story is not a book story.
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Sutcliff died when I was one year old, but it wasn’t until my middle schooling years that I came across her work. Our homeschooling curriculum had one of her books in it, and I remember my mother sitting down each evening just before bed with my sister and I to read The Eagle of the Ninth to us. And oh! did I fall in love with that world! It was like magic to me. Sutcliff, like Kipling himself, could bring to life times in which she had never walked herself. Like any two people, Sutcliff and I don’t always see eye to eye, but she became my mentor. I loved her faint archaisms, her way of looking at the world as though it were a living thing. Sheer magic.
To each his own. My own is The Silver Branch. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it – I’m slowly working on complete memorization – but every aspect of it I find fascinating. She throws you at once into the Roman’s Gateway to Britain and you’re caught up in poor Justin’s life, his friendship with Flavius, his discovery of and growing loyalty to Britain, and his fight to save it. Without being heavy with historical facts, she drops you into the lives of people who could have very well being living at that time: simple, throbbing, real people.
That’s what I love about Sutcliff, and without her work I might never have thought to be a writer myself.
Along with the slow process of completely memorizing The Silver Branch, I am slowly working on world domination. My social sphere is somewhat limited, but I have managed to encounter one other rabidly ecstatic Sutcliff fan like myself, and I have pressed upon several others the desire to read her work. I am making slow progress, but it is progress nonetheless.
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Though I’ve loved her books since I was about seven, It’s only in recent years that I’ve got round to reading some of Rosemary’s later books, and what a pleasant surprise they’ve proved to be! I’d previously thought that, after the great novels of the late 50s and 60s, she had rather declined into ‘retellings’, but many of these late novels are quite outstanding, and some feature periods she rarely if ever explored in her earlier books–the 17th century in Bonnie Dundee, and, marvellously, the Napoleonic period in the dreadfully titled ‘Blood and Sand’. And Frontier Wolf is a triumphant return to the world of ‘Eagle of the Ninth’ and perhaps the closest she comes to a Romano-British ‘Western’!
Having said all that, I do think that, in purely literary terms, perhaps ‘The Mark of the Horse Lord’ is her finest novel, and indeed one of the great landmarks of writing for young people.
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Thank you for your comments on my blog on http://www.buzzaboutbooks.com to which I’ve replied.
I’m delighted to find your website as I’ve been a huge Rosemary Sutcliff fan ever since an inspired teacher read us ‘The Armourer’s House’ when I was eight.
And it’s great to read of your family connection, too. I did admire her. She was not afraid to go for the jugular, emotionaly speaking. Certain episodes in ‘Knight’s Fee’ and ‘Outcast’ still bring tears to my eyes.
Elizabeth Hawksley
http://www.elizabethhawksley.com
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I think the first of Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels that I read as a youngster was from my local library. Dad and I used to go every other week (swimming on non-library Saturdays) and I would get out whole shelves of books, six at a time. Even then there was a definite historical slant to my reading matter, and thanks to a children’s edition of the legends of King Arthur that my Great-Granny had given me I was already primed to be a Sutcliff fan when I first spotted her works on the shelves. ‘Tristan & Iseult’ was an early favourite, renewed several times over so I could read it again, but eventually I started saving my pocket money to purchase books of my own. They were the Puffin paperbacks of the mid 1980s, with fairly realistic paintings for covers. I think the cover of ‘Frontier Wolf’ would have sold it to me even if the opening chapter hadn’t been such a belter of a hook. My absolute favourite Rosemary Sutcliff novel though was – and is – Dawn Wind. Dawn Wind has a cracking opening scene too, with young Owain waking up wounded on the battlefield to find the rest of his family dead. What would you do if you were the only survivor? I was hooked from the start, and young as I was I think I pretty much finished the novel in one sitting. I recently re-read Dawn Wind, twenty years on, and I still find it a gripping read. Sutcliff always kept her stories engaging and appropriate for younger readers but there is plenty of grit in them too. In Dawn Wind there are lice, wounds, malnutrition, hints at adultery and the deaths of several major characters. Sutcliff doesn’t pull her punches, and she certainly doesn’t patronise, which I think is why I can still enjoy the novels now. This approach has definitely influenced me in my own writing, and I hope I would never treat younger readers with less respect than adult readers either. I aspire to emulate Sutcliff’s lightness of touch too, neither scrimping on historical detail nor chucking in huge chunks of pace-killing description – a savvy young reader can be inspired to research around the story for themselves. I certainly was. Three degrees in archaeology later, with a lifetime of reading, and visiting historic sites, and now a historic novel of my own, I am grateful that my little provincial library kept a good stock of Sutcliff novels, and grateful to Rosemary Sutcliff herself for writing them.
Sally Newton
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Hurrah for Sally! Dawn Wind is my favourite of Rosemary’s novels too, certainly of the novels for young adults. The opening is stunning. It puts the reader in a very, very quiet place, where the noise of the surrounding world is just too harsh. Every time I read it I feel that same sense of silence, and, more importantly, the sense of huge events happening, of which we have only a small sense. I think Rosemary’s imagination is full out in Dawn Wind, and would argue that it is the greatest of her novels for young readers. Could it please be brought back into print, soon?
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I discovered Rosemary Sutcliff when I was twelve. We were on vacation at a friend’s house in the country. It was fall, and the air was just turning crisp. I sat on a rocking chair in front of the fireplace and read “Blood Feud” all day. Even now, the smell of wood-smoke in early autumn always reminds me of reading a good book.
What made Sutcliff’s books special was her well-crafted characters, and their bravery in dark times. I think she had a deeper understanding of trials because of the challenges in her own life. It comes through in her books: “Suddenly Marcus found that he was praying, praying as he had never prayed before, flinging his appeal for help up through the grey to the clear skies that were beyond.” (The Eagle of the Ninth).
When I was thirteen, the house next door went up for sale. I secretly hoped a Roman with a wolf cub would move in, but a family with a Jack Russell terrier bought it instead. But sometimes, when it rained – because rain always makes things seem more magical – I imagined it was really Cub from Eagle of the Ninth, and not a Jack Russell terrier.
If you’re curious what my favorite Sutcliff book is, read my blog post here:
http://theessentialemily.blogspot.com/2010/04/all-things-roman-or-how-i-wait-for.html
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Anthony:
We had some correspondence a long time ago, shortly after Rosemary’s death. My mother was her friend and correspondent for many years, since meeting her father in New York during WWII. I visited her on a couple of occasions while I lived in London in the 1970s.
I have the miniature that she painted for my mother, which I treasure. Are any of her paintings on view anywhere? I remember her showing me a drawer where her paintings were and that there was one of a centaur which stays in my mind.
I also have the broach which she sent my mother as a wedding present. It is mother-of-pearl with a worm encapsulated in it, and it is phallic in appearance which made my mother laugh. She always wondered whether this was something Rosemary did intentionally or not. Now I see she had a ‘rude’ sense of humor, so perhaps she was being naughty!
Nice to find your site and great information about a wonderful author. I still go back to her books for a “comfort read” and her vivid descriptions are so evocative and telling of her artistic talent.
Helen
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