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ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92)

For award-winning, internationally-acclaimed author Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92). By Anthony Lawton: godson, cousin & literary executor. Rosemary Sutcliff wrote historical fiction, children's literature and books, films, TV & radio, including The Eagle of the Ninth, Sword at Sunset, Song for a Dark Queen, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Silver Branch, The Lantern Bearers, Dawn Wind, Blue Remembered Hills.

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Rosemary Sutcliff | Author | Storyteller | Writer of historical fiction and children’s literature | #ReadingRosemarySutcliff

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Rosemary Sutcliff, world-acclaimed historical novelist and writer for children, young adults & adults wrote 57 distinct books

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Rosemary Sutcliff said she wrote books for children aged 8 to 88!

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UK Rosemary Sutcliff blog discovers Winnie-the-Pooh did not blog | #SundayBlogShare

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On telling fairy tales

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rosemary sutcliff

rosemary sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92) in her work study, writing-room
"An impish ... irreverent writer of genius" (The Guardian)

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recent posts

  • Rosemary Sutcliff in List of Top Twenty Living British Authors | The Times newspaper November 12th 1981
  • Interesting views & titles already from collecting on Twitter and Website views about eminent writer of children’s literature and historical fiction Rosemary Sutcliff‘s best books of fiction & re-telling
  • Which book do readers think is award-winning historical novelist and doyenne of children’s literature Rosemary Sutcliff’s best?
  • Film The Eagle, by Kevin MacDonald, based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s best-selling novel of children’s and young adult’s fiction literature and historical fiction shown again on UK Film 4 last night
  • Treasure trove of Rosemary Sutcliff, British writer of historical fiction and children’s literature correspondence in decades long friendship with Canadian Christina Duff Stewart discovered at Toronto Public Library

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Charles Keeping, Grendel from Beowulf
rosemary sutcliff's signature on three legions frontispiece

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twitter @rsutcliff

  • RT @Mat_at_Brookes: I think @kereengetten is a bright, powerful and welcoming voice in children's literature. I am excited about her next n… | 7 hours ago
  • @NuitsdeY @ElliePrimary1 @Falkirk_LRS Yes (of course!). But oh yes! Alan Garner as well as Rosemary Sutcliff #ReadingRosemarySutcliff | 7 hours ago
  • @FrankRGardner Rosemary Sutcliff would surely have empathised with you with her own lifetime of indignities with he… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 2 days ago
  • RT @biss_raphael: "All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find… | 3 days ago
  • On re #ReadingRosemarySutcliff’s Dawn Wind —“Heartbreaking”. Other reactions to #DawnWind here, and on the web… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 4 days ago
  • @MsRebeccaChance @adeelakhtar1234 And your ‘review’? | 4 days ago
  • Wonderful series, Sherwood, thank you all incl. @adeelakhtar1234 & dir some episodes @filmbenwilliam. (Fortuitousl… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 4 days ago
  • Oh how the world has changed over 1950-90s & then post-Cold War into which were launched Rosemary Sutcliff stories—… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 4 days ago
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the guardian newspaper in praise of rosemary sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff‘s 1954 children’s classic The Eagle of the Ninth (still in print more than 50 years on) is the first of a series of novels in which Sutcliff, who died in 1992, explored the cultural borderlands between the Roman and the British worlds – “a place where two worlds met without mingling” as she describes the British town to which Marcus, the novel’s central character, is posted.

Marcus is a typical Sutcliff hero, a dutiful Roman who is increasingly drawn to the British world of “other scents and sights and sounds; pale and changeful northern skies and the green plover calling”. This existential cultural conflict gets even stronger in later books like The Lantern Bearers and Dawn Wind, set after the fall of Rome, and has modern resonance. But Sutcliff was not just a one-trick writer.

The range of her novels spans from the Bronze Age and Norman England to the Napoleonic wars. Two of her best, The Rider of the White Horse and Simon, are set in the 17th century and are marked by Sutcliff’s unusually sympathetic (for English historical novelists of her era) treatment of Cromwell and the parliamentary cause. Sutcliff’s finest books find liberal-minded members of elites wrestling with uncomfortable epochal changes. From Marcus Aquila to Simon Carey, one senses, they might even have been Guardian readers.

top posts

  • All Synopses
  • Which book do readers think is award-winning historical novelist and doyenne of children’s literature Rosemary Sutcliff’s best?
  • Chosen with a poet's care | The names of Rosemary Sutcliff's characters | Placidus, Allectus, Evicatos, Tradui
  • In The Eagle of the Ninth film Douglas Henshall had 'best time' with Channing Tatum
  • More Boudicca!
  • Rosemary Sutcliff | Interview in the Independent newspaper in April 1992
  • Sword and Sandal | Sword and Sandals | Swords and Sandals | Films and Books

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