Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92), author of The Eagle of the Ninth book, now a film due in February 2011 to be called The Eagle, as well as a TV and radio series, wrote some sixty children’s books, historical novels, and stories. This blog reviews and covers all the books by Rosemary Sutcliff: every book for children, adults and young adults, and related TV, radio and films (movies) of the books. Read More »
Tag: young adult fiction
Rosemary Sutcliff | An Unforgettable Writer of Fantasy and more| Sutcliff Review of the Week
Rosemary Sutcliff, children’s writer and historical novelist, is “unforgettable” to Keith Taylor, himself a writer, in a web article which reader of this blog Anne McFadgen has alerted me to (Thank you!). Her work, he writes, is “memorable'” because “decades after he has read her books scenes “from all of them come to my mind’s eye as vividly as if I’d seen them happen”. Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff valediction in 1992 | Sutcliff Discovery of the Day
Rosemary Sutcliff, author of The Eagle of the Ninth now in the news as a ‘sword and sandals’ film (The Eagle of the Ninth!), was reviewed with affectionate insight by Veronica Horwell in The Guardian newspaper shortly after her death in 1992.
Rosemary Sutcliff did not spare the child, the raven and the wolf gorging on the battlefield dead. Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff on English Civil War children’s book, historical novel Simon 1953
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 on writing for children
“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) 