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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.

Videos

2014 Edinburgh production of Sword at Sunset, original historical novel by Rosemary Sutcliff

Video06/03/2014201424/03/20142014 Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

James Beagon,  currently an undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, created this adaptation. (Thank you JB for the production and for link to this video). He was interviewed about the adaptation—by Sandra Garside-Neville— for The Historical Novel Society .

Rosemary Sutcliff’s besteller Sword at Sunset staged in Edinburgh, now!

Video26/02/2014201426/02/20142014 Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

On at http://www.bedlamtheatre.co.uk in Edinburgh

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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topics and books

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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rosemary sutcliff's signature on three legions frontispiece

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twitter @rsutcliff

  • @DrMMGilchrist1 Exactly. This was current as a term the 1920s …. | 1 day ago
  • @AndrewsSusanM @StormofCuteness @BerglundJerome Many tweeters here love and/or loved #ReadingRosemarySutcliff (NB #SutcliffNotSutcliffe) | 1 day ago
  • #OTD 20 years ago, Robin Cook on war and Iraq …. twitter.com/rsutcliff/stat… | 1 day ago
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  • Will it happen again? In my lifetime I fear not. A 2nd chamber we need, but not unelected, inc.bishops, Johnson f… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 1 day ago
  • Not only did Tony Blair believe he was “fallible like any other human being”, knowing only what he believed (said,… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | 2 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

  • Rosemary Sutcliff’s mother had Second Sight, a “thing which one expects of a Celt more than a Saxon"
  • Guardian obituary view on Rosemary Sutcliff, historical novelist and children’s writer of distinction
  • Rosemary Sutcliff to BBC Radio Times in 1977 on her historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth and hero Marcus
  • Rosemary Sutcliff | A Crown of Wild Olive | Olympics Story
  • A Crown of Wild Olive | Rosemary Sutcliff story of the Greek Olympics
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  • That’s not a sand-castle, I’m building a temple to Mithras!

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