Tag: Dark & Middle Ages

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales” | Possibly Albert Einstein quote!

Anthony Lawton1 Comment

Rosemary Sutcliff grew up was seriously affected by juvenile arthritis from a very young age. She was not at school and unable to read until aged about ten years, but she was read to ceaselessly by her mother, including Grimm’s Fairy-Tales – a copy of which was in her library.

Allegedly Albert Einstein, the physicist behind the Theory of General Relativity and other crucial theoretical advances of the 20th century, once said: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Mind you that he said it might be a fairy-tale itself: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2013/12/einsteins-folklore .

Arthurian story by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Sword and the Circle | Republished with 19 other children’s classics by Puffin

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Puffin books have redesigned 20 classic books, covering 80 years of children’s fiction — bringing together fairy tales and fantasies, historical adventures and comic mis-adventures, in A Puffin Book list 20 classics.

The Sword and the Circle new 2015 Puffin Edition

Guardian text on Rosemary Sutcliff The Sword and the Circle

All covers here

Blogger loved Dawn Wind by historical novelist and children’s literature doyenne Rosemary Sutcliff

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In 2010 Joanna R. Smith blogged about reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s Dawn Wind—“gorgeous historical fiction” about Britain in the 6th Century AD. She loved (Rosemary Sutcliff’s): “storytelling and characters, and her talent of letting you hear and see and feel the things in her books. Her prose is quiet and lyrical and compelling, and this is “ Lovely, lovely stuff. The kind of writing I aspire to!”

The moon drifted clear of a long bank of cloud, and the cool slippery light hung for a moment on the crest of the high ground, and then spilled down the gentle bush-grown slope to the river. Between the darkness under the banks the water which had been leaden gray woke into moving ripple-patterns, and a crinkled skin of silver light marked where the paved ford carried across the road from Corinium to Aquae Sulis. Somewhere among the matted islands of rushes and water crowfoot, a moorhen cucked and was still. On the high ground in the loop of the river nothing moved at all, save the little wind that ran shivering through the hawthorn bushes.

Source: Just a Lyric in a Children’s Rhyme: A long bank of cloud

Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels, from Bronze Age to 19th Century

Anthony Lawton1 Comment

Someone recently asked me if there were other novels by Rosemary Sutcliff set in the Bronze Age , apart from Warrior Scarlet. This set me thinking. Helped by a livejournal posting I came across a while back, and based on my own reading (some of it too long ago), I came up with this list—exceluding the re-tellings such as Beowulf. I imagine regular readers here can improve it? Anything missing?

Bronze and Iron Age
The Chief’s Daughter
Shifting Sands
Warrior Scarlet
Sun Horse, Moon Horse

Ancient Greece
The Flowers of Adonis
The Truce of the Games (A Crown of Wild Olive)

Roman Britain
Song for a Dark Queen
Eagle’s Egg
The Capricorn Bracelet
The Eagle of the Ninth
The Mark of the Horse Lord
Outcast
A Circlet of Oak Leaves
The Silver Branch
Frontier Wolf

The Dark Ages
The Lantern Bearers
Sword at Sunset
The Sword and the Circle
The Light Beyond the Forest
The Road to Camlann
Dawn Wind
The Shining Company

Vikings
Sword Song
Blood Feud

Norman
The Shield Ring
Knight’s Fee
The Witch’s Brat

Elizabethan and 16th century
The Armourer’s House
The Queen Elizabeth Story
Brother Dusty-Feet
Lady In Waiting

English Civil War and 17th century
The Rider of the White Horse
Simon
Bonnie Dundee

18th century
Flame-Coloured Taffeta

19th century
Blood and Sand

(Additions  9/3/14)

People and places in Sword at Sunset | Rosemary Sutcliff

Anthony Lawton5 Comments

I came across this page on the internet about who’s who in Rosemary Sutcliff‘s historical novel and re-telling of the King Arthur legend Sword at Sunset. (Without any apparent context, it intrigued me!)

People

Ambrosius–Aurelius Ambrosius, mentioned in Geoffrey of Monmouth, here Artos’ uncle
Arian–Artos’ first horse; rides him through fiery walls

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