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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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Book cover of The Flowers of Adonis, historical fiction by Rosemary Sutcliff about Ancient Greek hero Alkibiades| New 2014 edition by Endeavour Press

Image13/09/20142014 Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

Original book cover of The Flowers of Adonis (about Alkibiades, or Alcibiades) by Rosemary Sutcliff

Image13/09/20142014 Anthony Lawton1 Comment

Today is International Children’s Book Day!

Image02/04/2014201402/04/20142014 Anthony Lawton1 Comment

L’Aigle de la Neuvième Légion, a TV en France aujourd’hui!

Image24/03/2014201424/03/20142014 Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

L’Aigle de la Neuvième Légion is the French film version of The Eagle film derived from Rosemary Sutcliff’s best-selling historical fiction book L’Aigle de la Neuvième Légion (The Eagle of the Ninth). Posts about the film on this blog here.

BBC can spell Kaye Webb with a E | But not Rosemary Sutcliff without an E

Image10/03/2014201410/03/20142014 Anthony Lawton1 Comment

Intriguing BBC Radio programme on Kaye Webb, creator of Puffin Books. They published some Rosemary Sutcliff books. But it is no more Rosemary Sutcliff with an E than it is Kay Webb without!

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

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recent posts

  • Simon (1953), an English Civil War novel of historical fiction and children‘s literature book that Noel Streatfield recommends “with all my heart” .
  • 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

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

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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

  • Titles
  • On Writing
  • Rosemary Sutcliff's Knight's Fee re-read by Australian fantasy author Garth Nix in 2007! | Sutcliff Discovery of the Day
  • In Praise of Rosemary Sutcliff, historical novelist and writer for children| An editorial in The Guardian newspaper
  • Rosemary Sutcliff: "innately sexist"?
  • Rosemary Sutcliff's press cuttings collection for 1963 best seller Sword at Sunset
  • Geoffrey Trease, writer and playwright, told the people’s stories

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