The Eagle of the Ninth (now a 2010 film) is ‘perhaps’ Rosemary Sutcliff’s ‘finest book of historical fiction’ claims Alan Myers, and she is ‘one of the most distinguished children’s writers of our times’. The Eagle of the Ninth ‘exemplifies the psychological dilemmas that Rosemary Sutcliff brought to her novels’.
Rosemary Sutcliff said about the historical accuracy of her children’s book Simon written early in her career in 1953, set in the English Civil War of the 17th century:
“Most history books deal with the final campaign of the civil war in a single paragraph, and the Battle of Torrington they seldom mention at all. In this story I have tried to show what that final campaign in the west was like, and to re-fight the battles fought over my own countryside. Most of the people I’ve written about really lived; Torrington Church really did blow up, with 200 Royalist prisoners and their Parliamentary Guard inside, and no one has ever known how it happened, though Chaplain Joshua Sprigg left it on record that the deed was done by ‘one Watts, a desperate villain’ “.
Rosemary Sutcliff, writer of children’s fiction, is named by C.C. Humphreys, author of Vlad: The Last Confession, and several historical novels, as his favourite author. Writing for the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia about his favourite books, he listed the classic historical novel Warrior Scarlet and said:Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff was the UK children’s author nominee for The Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1969 and 1974. She was highly commended in 1974. Every two years the International Board on Books for Young People awards the prize Read More »
“The themes of my children’s books are mostly quite adult, and in fact the difference between writing for children and for adults is, to me at any rate, only a quite small gear change.”
Source: Townsend, John Rowe. 1971. A Sense of Story. London: Longman p. 201
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 