Image – ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92)

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Collection of Rosemary Sutcliff covers via Google Images March 2016

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.

	Valerie Heard on The Eagle of the Ninth BBC Rad…
	26soldiersoftin on The Books of Rosemary Sut…
	Cathy Gillespie on The Books of Rosemary Sut…
	John Simmons on The Books of Rosemary Sut…
	Roz on The Books of Rosemary Sut…
	Calmgrove on The Books of Rosemary Sut…
	Pat Carson on The Books of Rosemary Sut…

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

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

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

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

On telling fairy tales

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