Even the briefest of entries to Rosemary Sutcliff’s diary demonstrates her love of landscape and nature, so evident in her novels and autobiography, and noted by a contributor to The Scottish Book Trust site.
When I was just getting confident about reading, my mother asked our local librarian to recommend something that would stretch me a bit. The Silver Branch was her choice. It began a lifelong love affair with this wonderful writer. But it did much more than that. Read More »
At Sherborne, Bess had made a still-room out of one of the groined store chambers and gradually her shelves were filling; a hound bitch had puppies, and the new flamed and feathered tulips came into flower, and these were the things that contented her.
From Lady in Waiting by Rosemary Sutcliff
April 15th Friday. Sheila bought some seeds from the ironmonger, and this evening Ray has gone off to Shopwyck to get a couple of clematis for the new fence. The garden must be wondering what’s hit it. Lovely show of tulips, the golden ones turning apricot under the dining room and bedsit window, but of course the cream and wine ones I got last autumn have been trampled out of existence when the fence was done.
© Anthony Lawton 2012
As he did so, there was a small fluttering in the heart of some overgrown bushes beside the gap in the wall. His heart lurched unpleasantly, and then steadied as a chiff-chaff darted out, and the fluttering was explained.
From Dawn Wind by Rosemary Sutcliff
April 11th, Monday. Ray gave the lawn its first cut this afternoon, without the box on. So now, the fumes of petrol having gone, there’s a nice smell of cut grass. The chiffchaff busy in the garden all morning.
© Anthony Lawton 2012
Rosemary knew the colouring, shape, flight and song of numerous birds, part of her deep knowledge of the natural world. I, on the other hand am most ignorant. So it is the RSPB site that helps me explain (complete with recording of its song) that a chiffchaff is small olive-brown warbler which actively flits through trees and shrubs, with a distinctive tail-wagging movement. It is readily recognised by its song, from where it gets its name. It picks insects from trees, and flies out to snap them up in flight. All this evoked for her diary and herself, perhaps, by Rosemary’s reference to the bird being ‘busy’. (An intriguing curiosity is that in her diary she writes chiffchaff, but the copy-editor in the OUP version of Dawn Wind has chiff-chaff!)
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 