April 24th Sunday. Another cuckoo this morning. Muriel to tea.
categories and books
- Rosemary Sutcliff, historical novelist and writer for children, had a profound sense of the British landscape and its past | Philip Reeve
- Novelist Tony Bradman writes about being inspired by internationally-acclaimed historical novelist Rosemary Sutcliff
- Rosemary Sutcliff on liking children, adults or dogs more
- Internationally acclaimed historical novelist and writer for children, Rosemary Sutcliff, could not read when nine years old
- Slightly Foxed recall Rosemary Sutcliff’s account of her First Love | For Valentine’s Day
rosemary sutcliff tagsAncient Greece Archaeology Arthurian authors awards books C. Walter Hodges Carnegie Medal Charles Keeping children's books children's literature Dark & Middle Ages disability dogs education film garden health historical fiction History King Arthur music nature quotes Romans translation Vikings writers writing young adult fiction
- .@WorldBookDayUK For good reason, the rest of the world celebrates #WorldBookDay 23 April. Why are we different? http://t.co/zYKfbjmywF | 1 hour ago
- .@bbc5live #WorldBookDay: boy as #ChristianGrey; Myleene Klass’s girls as MK; UK gvmnt, having banned bks in prison.. http://t.co/3k51ky8zVz | 3 hours ago
- @bbc5live 11yr dressed as #ChristianGrey; Myleene Klass dressing her 2 daughters as herself. NB #WorldBookDay once for reading not clothing! | 3 hours ago
- Oh dear, post #WorldBookDay #r4today’s focus is on clothing — a boy who wore Shades of Grey—not on books, reading & writing. | 3 hours ago
- Followers new & old: please help me (RT?) remind Twitterspere that #writer was Rosemary Sutcliff, not Sutcliffe—no E. rosemarysutcliff.com/category/sutcl… | 4 hours ago
- @CameronSharonE @bringmybooks @RutaSepetys Shedve been pleased you moved. But gentle nudge Rosemary Sutcliff, no ‘e’—with was the murderer! | 4 hours ago
- @BriW74 @greg_jenner Pleased to reed that The Eagle of the Ninth changed your life. (But gentle nudge, by Rosemary Sutcliff without an ‘e’) | 4 hours ago
- RT @littlemiscowboy: How's this for a #WorldBookDay costume? A fearsome Celtic warrior from Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle Of The Ninth. ht… | 4 hours ago
rosemary sutcliff’s signature
the guardian, 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.