The Eagle of the Ninth and Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff (are one of my favourite books) … or I could have chosen Knight’s Fee, or The Lantern Bearers, or Sun-horse, Moon-horse, or Frontier Wolf … Rosemary Sutcliff is one of my favourite children’s authors, and I doubt she ever wrote a bad book, but these were the two I liked best when I was growing up.Read More »
Tag: young adult fiction
Does the Arthurian legend hold essential truth for difficult times? | Yes, said Rosemary Sutcliff in 1991
Some two decades ago, Rosemary Sutcliff, author of best-selling historical novel Sword at Sunset, suggested that :
“The Arthurian legend contains an essential truth, and I think at present we’re awfully uncertain of our future.Therefore we feel a kind of kinship for the Dark Ages; and I think for this reason we feel in a way the need for something to back us up, in the same way as Arthur ‘lights up’ the Dark Ages. We have a need for an archetype of some sort to pull us together, to get us through this, to spread light into the darkness until we can get through to a better world.”
Perhaps true of our times now as much as twenty years ago? Read More »
Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Mark of the Horse Lord loved by Cornish writer Anna Maria Murphy
I discovered in 2010 that renowned Cornish writer Anna Maria Murphy was a great fan of Rosemary Sutcliff, author of children’s books and historical fiction. Anna writes for Theatre, as well as radio.
As a girl and a young woman, Rosemary Sutcliff was my absolute favourite writer and The Mark Of The Horse Lord one of my favourite books of all time. She was unlike any other writer for young people … ahead of her time by generations. She was one of the reasons I wanted to write as a young person … I always wanted to meet her … I wrote to her once, and she sent a lovely reply, but I lost the letter many years ago.
Anna began to write for theatre to avoid playing a dog! Her writing for Kneehigh has included ‘Don John’, ‘The Bacchae’, ‘The Red Shoes’, ‘Tristan & Yseult’, ‘Skulduggery’, ‘Doubtful Island’ ‘Ghost Nets’, ‘Women Who Threw the Day Away’, ‘Telling Tales’, ‘Wild Bride’ (The Shamans) and the film ‘Flight’. She has also written for Theatre Alibi, Platform 4, Brainstorm Films, The Eden Project, and several plays for Radio 4.
(Re-post from 2010, slightly updated)
Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Lantern Bearers | Folio Society edition a Christmas present for friends or family?
The Folio Society’s beautiful version of Rosemary Sutcliff’s award-winning historical novel The Lantern Bearers is the latest of their wonderful reproductions of Rosemary Sutcliff novels. Perhaps a fitting present for someone this Christmas – it can be ordered online?
Winner of the prestigious Carnegie Medal in 1957, The Lantern Bearers is, in some people’s eyes, the best and most thoughtful of Rosemary Sutcliff’s Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles. Penelope Lively’s, who knew Rosemary well, and spoke at the memorial service we organised for her way back in 1992, has written a special new introduction. She comments:
It is a work of her maturity, one in which she had already honed all her signature skills – her power of narrative, of pace, her way with characters, the rich evocations of a Britain that is gone but that she had recreated. It is full of the creamy surf of meadowsweet alongside crimson cloaks flying in the wind …
This edition is illustrated by the award-winning Russian artist, Roman Pisarev.
Source: The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Folio Society.
Another Pile of Books includes Rosemary Sutcliff | Song for a Dark Queen
First, chronologically speaking, in my big pile of Roman-setting (Rosemary) Sutcliffs : the tragic, doomed story of Boudicca (Song for A Dark Queen). I’d read this before several times, but I re-read it recently. It’s very dark, especially for a children’s book – she doesn’t pull her punches, everything in Cassius Dio’s not-really-very-contemporary-but-best-we’ve-got account is there: the rapes, the casual violence of the Romans, the torture and sacrifice of Roman women by Boudicca’s forces.
Boudicca is horrifying in this, but the writing is fabulous, and for me, it really works. Even though Boudicca ends up doing horrifying things, I felt that I ended up caring for the character and feeling a sort of understanding for her.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 