I was very happy this past weekend to find that two of my granddaughters, too young yet to be reading independently, are such good listeners they can recite their favourite books by heart. I particularly enjoyed joining in with Audrey’s rendition of Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, although I don’t know that she approved of my doing it with a Kelvinside accent. Two year olds often prefer a vanilla delivery.
Listening is a dying art, especially for children growing up in homes with several TV sets. Watching is an entirely different skill. It’s hard to imagine them rushing to tune in to the radio as my generation did in the Fifties, eager for the next episode of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth. There was no spin-off DVD. You had to imagine the scene for yourself.
Tag: writers
Posts about authors other than Rosemary Sutcliff
The Girl I Kissed at Clusium | Roman legion marching Song by Rosemary Sutcliff | Quoted by Falco novelist Lindsey Davis
Lindsey Davis writes detective novels set in classical Rome, featuring the world of maverick private eye and poet Falco. On the publication in 2009 of the nineteenth of what became a bestselling series of novels known for their meticulous historical detail, she chose Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth as one of her top ten Roman books. (See here for previous post).
Regular commenter here and Rosemary Sutcliff enthusiast Anne has reminded me (via the You Write tab above) of this, and alerted me to some intriguing homage, newly paid. For Anne was ‘tickled’ when reading Lindsey Davis’s latest novel, Master and God, to find a nod to Rosemary Sutcliff when a soldier mentions a legionary marching song. It appears again in the acknowledgements at the back: “The Girl I Kissed at Clusium”’: The Legionary Song in The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff.
In Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel the snatches of song are:
Oh when I joined the Eagles
(As it might be yesterday)
I kissed a girl at Clusium
Before I marched away
A long march, a long march
And twenty years in store
When I left my girl at Clusium
Beside the threshing-floor
…
The girls of Spain were honey-sweet,
And the golden girls of Gaul:
And the Thracian maids were soft as birds
To hold the heart in thrall.
But the girl I kissed at Clusium
Kissed and left at Clusium,
The girl I kissed at Clusium
I remember best of all
(Thank you Anne)
Rosemary Sutcliff “did the honours for Roman Britain” but Elizabeth Laird’s top ten books about “tough stuff from out there”, now!
From the Guardian Books website:
What does a good novel do for you? Make you laugh? Make you cry, gasp, clutch the pages, miss your stop on the bus? Well, yes. All of those things. But I like a novel that also illuminates a corner of the real world that I hardly knew existed, and brings it to life.
Good historical novels do that. Geoffrey Trease hard-wired ancient Greece into my imagination and Rosemary Sutcliff did the honours for Roman Britain. Read More »
In most historical novels plot is secondary to theme and subject | Rosemary Sutcliff Discovery of the Day
It has probably been long forgotten, indeed unknown to most people, including current staff at her publishers Hodder and Stoughton, that around 1970 they published The Hodder and Stoughton Library of Great Historical Novels, chosen by Rosemary Sutcliff. One was Scent of Cloves by Norah Lofts (first published in 1958). At the end of her introduction, Rosemary Sutcliff wrote:
This is a very difficult book to write about. Read More »
Don’t implement promises but keep them | Advice from C. S. Lewis on writing
The serendipitous ‘Letters of Note’ blog publishes ‘correspondence deserving of a wider audience’. It introduced a C S Lewis letter withe the comment that “what’s admirable is that he attempted to reply to each and every one of those pieces of fan mail, and not just with a generic, impersonal line “. So too did Rosemary Sutcliff, although I only have a couple of examples. (There must be several thousand out in the world in draws and treasure boxes). Lewis’s advice to a Narnia fan about writing was:
What really matters is:
1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”
4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”
5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 