Rosemary Sutcliff: an appreciation

Great Archaeology Movies: The Eagle of the Ninth

2011-06-08T14:07:00.006Z

British Archaeology magazine's July/August 2011 edition is just out. Of interest to Sutcliff fans is a commentary on Great Archaeology Movies. Lindsay Allason-Jones, one of the UK's foremost Roman Finds experts was the archaeology consultants to the movie of The Eagle of the Ninth. Here's a short quote from her:

"... I was first sent the draft script, which I blue pencilled savagely. Several incorrect details still got into the film (spot the fourth century brooch) but the final product was a great deal more accurate that it might have been ... Some things I could not change - neither of the [lead] actors were confident riders, so the insurance company insisted on them using stirrups, despite my comments that it was hard to fall out of a Roman saddle ..."

At least Sutcliff's name was spelled correctly, even if Lindsay Allason-Jones first name wasn't (Lyndsey?!). And yes, I did clock the forth century brooch - think it was in the scene in Uncle Aquila's villa, if memory serves ...

In praise of… Rosemary Sutcliff

2011-04-02T09:39:00.002Z

The Guardian is doing great stuff about The Eagle and Rosemary Sutcliff. The article here has a neat summary, as well as a lively set of reader comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/29/rosemary-sutcliff-in-praise-of?INTCMP=SRCH

Re-reading: The Eagle of the Ninth

2011-04-02T09:18:00.003Z

Charlotte Higgins of the Guardian re-considers the lure of Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/02/eagle-of-the-ninth-rosemary-sutcliff?INTCMP=SRCH

One Take on "The Eagle" Film

2011-04-01T13:45:00.004Z

THE EAGLE

One tends to approach the film version of a favourite novel with some trepidation, especially if it’s a formative novel of one’s childhood, as greatly loved today as it was when first read. Have the film-makers changed it? Have they ruined it?

With The Eagle, the film based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1954 children’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth, the answer to the first question is ‘yes, and how!’

Whilst the main characters and the perilous quest for the lost Eagle standard of the Ninth Legion are still there, the film has no Cradoc, no Cottia, no Cub and the roles of Uncle Aquila and Guern the Hunter are cut short or changed. If you accept that cinema demands a different kind of storytelling from the novel and that it has time limitations, you’ll agree that it can’t embrace every nuance of character in a novel, or indeed every character; nor can it include every subplot, no matter how integral these are to the shaping of character and hence to the audience’s emotional investment in the story.

So have they ruined it?

I can’t help thinking that in The Eagle, the film-makers have slashed and burned with such abandon that the film bears only the most superficial resemblance to the novel. If I hadn’t read The Eagle of the Ninth I’d consider The Eagle a pretty good adventure film, more involving, more engaging than last year’s cartoonish Centurion, also based on the legend of the lost Ninth Legion. The film is well-paced, immediate and exciting in its chase and battle scenes (no freeze-frame or CGI silliness here); it has a strong sense of place and period – never mind the inaccuracies: most of the audience won’t care about those. And, no matter how little I like them, the changes in the story do have their own internal logic.

But I can’t un-read the novel. And without, I hope, my affection for it making me feel I own it (‘how dare they change what I love’), I think the film-makers have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

The problem lies mainly with the central characters, Marcus and Esca. They lack the depth Sutcliff gives them in the novel and they don’t change as a result of the conflicts and ordeals they undergo (as epitomised in that horrible, trite ending). So it’s hard to take the heroes to our hearts – frankly, I don’t much care what happens to film-Marcus and film-Esca, I’m just enjoying the pursuits and the fights. Which, I suppose, is how the movie moguls de nos jours perceive themselves to be giving their target audience (young males 15-30?) what they want. I’d like to think they’d want more.

One of Sutcliff’s major themes in the novel is the bond of friendship and loyalty. The film keeps the master/slave relationship between Marcus and Esca throughout the quest, even reversing it during the most dangerous phase. So there’s no room for Marcus to free Esca before they set out and to declare, stirringly, ‘Esca, I should never have asked you to come with me into this hazard when you were not free to refuse…No one should ask a slave to go with him on such a hunting trail; but – he might ask a friend.’

Another important theme is that of the tension between conqueror and conquered. I'm sad that in the film there’s no Cradoc and no Cottia and therefore no indication, except on the most brutal level, of the clash of culture and outlook between Roman and Briton, much less how it might begin to be resolved. In the film, Marcus, if he thinks about them at all, appears to see Britons as unreconstructed savages from beginning to end. In the novel, his encounters with conquered Cradoc and semi-Romanised Cottia and her family, as well as his growing friendship with the enslaved Esca, all contribute to changing his attitude to Rome’s subjects, so that at the end of the novel he decides not to return to his native Italy but to settle in Britain of the ‘pale and changeful northern skies and the green plover calling’. Even if there was no time in the film for Cradoc and Cottia, surely the novel’s symbolism of Cub’s release or the wonderfully visual metaphor Esca makes from the contrast between the straight lines of the pattern on Marcus’s dagger sheath and the formless swirls on a British war shield could have taken their place? Surely there should have been room for at least one of these in a film nearly two hours long.

In sum, The Eagle, though good of its type, is a less interesting film than it might have been. But if it encourages people to read The Eagle of the Ninth and revives interest in Rosemary Sutcliff’s other absorbing, inspiring novels, then it will have done its work.

The Eagle - '... admirably embraces certain unfashionable virtues ...'

2011-03-27T20:20:00.005Z

Thoughtful review by Philip French from The Observer, 27th March:

First published in 1954, The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff's novel for older children, is now regarded as a classic. Her title refers to the standard carried by the Ninth Legion of the Roman army that disappeared in the north of Britain in the second century AD, and it's the story of how the young Marcus Aquila later sets out to discover what happened to its leader, his father Flavius Aquila, and the 500 men he led ...

See the rest at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/27/the-eagle-channing-tatum-review

The Eagle - '...a solid, watchable piece of storytelling'

2011-03-26T12:38:00.003Z

The 3 star review from the UK's Guardian newspaper:

'Kevin Macdonald has made a decent, forthright, if finally uninspired sword'n'sandal drama, based on Rosemary Sutcliff's 1954 children's novel The Eagle of the Ninth ... '

Find the rest of the review at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/24/the-eagle-film-review

Sutcliff and Sword at Sunset by Annis

2011-03-17T12:23:00.003Z

Annis has written an interesting article about Sword at Sunset at:

http://www.historicalnovels.info/Sword-at-Sunset.html

"Sword at Sunset is a vision of the legendary King Arthur as the man he might really have been. Rosemary Sutcliff has created a compelling and memorable figure in Artos, a Romano-Celtic warrior prince who spends his life fighting to stem the tide of Saxon tribesmen who flood into Britain following the departure of the Roman army in the fifth century AD ... "

With a longer article about Rosemary Sutcliff at:

http://www.historicalnovels.info/Rosemary-Sutcliff.html

"Ask any baby-boomer who loves historical fiction what inspired their appreciation, and chances are the reply will be, “Well, when I was a kid I read Rosemary Sutcliff’s books”. Out of print for years, Sutcliff’s novels are making a comeback as their original readers reach an age when they can influence the reissue of old favourites ..."

Anthony Lawton's Rosemary Sutcliff Pages

2011-03-16T20:09:00.003Z

Anthony Lawton has moved the Rosemary Sutcliff site to:

http://rosemarysutcliff.com/

There's also a Facebook page which can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rosemary-Sutcliff/104828099548214

And you can follow on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/rsutcliff

The Eagle, released in the UK 23rd March

2011-03-16T19:49:00.006Z

Adapted from The Eagle of the Ninth, this film is eagerly awaited. Reviews from the US are currently a little cautious, but Sutcliff fans are likely to turn out anyway. This blogger is looking forward to the 23rd March!

A Rosemary Sutcliff website ...

2010-06-07T19:02:00.003Z

Anthony Lawton's web pages about Rosemary Sutcliff - lots of information about the forthcoming film of Eagle of the Ninth too:

http://rosemarysutcliff.wordpress.com/

Eagle of the Ninth Film - finally ...

2009-06-07T15:33:00.002Z

Filming of Sutcliff's best known novel is to begin in Scotland, this August:

http://channingtatumunwrapped.com/category/movies/the-eagle-of-the-ninth/

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/showbiz-news/showbiz-news/2009/05/25/new-scots-film-the-eagle-of-the-ninth-tipped-to-be-bigger-hit-than-braveheart-86908-21387357/

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=24498

Hurrah!

Rosemary Sutcliff Rides Again!

2008-03-29T16:16:00.018Z

There seems to be a resurgence of interest in reissuing Rosemary Sutcliff's novels - and not before time, either!

Sandra posted advance notice here in January that Sutcliff's consummate Arthurian novel, Sword at Sunset, is to be reissued in May by an American publisher, The Chicago Review Press, with a new cover design and foreword by Jack Whyte. (NB on making the links, I see that it's available now on amazon.co.uk and on amazon.com.)

Meanwhile, another U.S publisher, Front Street, which specialises in young adult fiction, has brought out
The Mark of the Horse Lord (2006)

The Shield Ring (2007)

and Frontier Wolf (2008)

in paperback with very striking covers and high quality print and paper. Sadly the illustrations from the original OUP editions aren't included.

And what about her old publishers, the Oxford University Press, here in Blighty? Well, they're doing their bit too.
The Eagle of the Ninth

has never (I believe) been out of print since it was first published in 1954 and the most recent edition came out in 2004, marking 50 years since it was first published. New editions of the other two novels in the trilogy, The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers, were reissued in 2007, so that all three classic novels are now available in a uniform edition.

The OUP will be reissuing Outcast in July 2008

and (according to amazon.co.uk, though it isn't mentioned on the OUP website yet) Warrior Scarlet in August 2008.

I should love to see new editions of Song for a Dark Queen, The Capricorn Bracelet, Dawn Wind, Knight's Fee, Blood Feud, The Shining Company, Sun Horse, Moon Horse...and, oh, all of her other wonderful novels made available for a new generation of readers. But this is a very promising and welcome start to be going on with!

Opening Doorways in the Mind by Hazel Wood

2008-02-12T08:37:00.003Z

This article is from Slightly Foxed Issue 17:

Opening Doorways in the Mind

by Hazel Wood

I grew up in a house on the edge of a cliff, looking out over a bay. There was an upstairs drawing-room which was never used, and in the evenings when I was a little girl, I would go up there and close the door. Kneeling on the window-seat, I would gaze out at the sunset over the sea and the clouds banking on the horizon, and escape into my imagination. In those clouds I saw horses and chariots, marching legions, the thronged streets of medieval towns, knights in armour, great ships in full sail on a golden sea – vivid images from the books my father read me. The worlds they conjured up were consoling and utterly real to me, and I lived in them more than I lived in the present.

Rosemary Sutcliff was the creator of some of those worlds, and years after I first encountered her through her early books The Eagle of the Ninth and The Armourer’s House, I came to know her again – insofar as one can know such a complex person – through her memoir Blue Remembered Hills. It was first published in 1983 and the cover shows its author sitting in a wheelchair in a garden, looking straight out. It is in some ways a startling picture for a book jacket, for her body, hands and arms are twisted by the infantile arthritis, known as Still’s Disease, that burned its way through her as a child, leaving her permanently disabled. But what to me is most arresting about the photograph is her direct and humorous gaze. It sums up the spirit of Blue Remembered Hills which, despite the inevitable pain it often records, is the very opposite of a misery memoir. It is a record of the growing up and making of a writer, and it is full of poetry, humour, affection, joy in people and the natural world, and the kind of deep understanding that can come out of some very hard experiences. It is a book I would recommend to any apprentice writer as an example of what really good writing is.

Rosemary Sutcliff was born in 1920, the only child of a naval father – a dear, straightforward man who ‘you could never for a moment have mistaken for anything but a sailor. He had a quiet steady face with a cleft chin, and grey-blue eyes crinkled up by years of narrowing them against rain and wind’ – and a pretty, manic-depressive mother with bags of charm and a wild imagination, who in an ideal world would probably have become an actress but instead found herself travelling from naval station to naval station – Malta, Chatham, Sheerness. And although she loved dancing and parties, she missed out on the social life that went with being a naval wife because she was caring for a sick and increasingly disabled child.

‘She was wonderful, no mother could have been more wonderful,’ writes Rosemary. ‘But ever after, she demanded that I should not forget it nor cease to be grateful, nor hold an opinion different from her own, nor even, as I grew older, feel the need for any companionship but hers.’ It was an intensely close and intensely difficult relationship – but as Rosemary observes: ‘Very few of the worthwhile things in this world are all that easy.’

Even so, in some ways Rosemary’s was an enchanted childhood, lived among the vivid sights and sounds of the dockyards, ‘the smell of pitch and hot metal, wood and white paint, salt water and rope and oily smoke’ which would later feed into her books. There were the people, too, of these small closed communities – adults on whom Rosemary, as an only child who couldn’t walk very well, was particularly dependent, though she did make friends of her own.

Memorable among these was Miss Beck, who ran a school in Chatham for the children of naval families, with ‘no teaching qualifications whatsoever, save the qualifications of long experience and love’. ‘Any elementary schoolteacher of today would have fallen into strong hysterics or sat down with a banner in some public place after one look at our schoolroom, though I don’t think we ever had much fault to find with it,’ Rosemary writes. ‘It had mud-coloured walls with damp stains in the outer corners, three shelves of limp and weary school-books, a bit of unravelled carpet on the floor.’

In this unpromising setting Miss Beck’s students made cross-stitch kettle holders, drew elaborate kaleidoscopic patterns on graph paper and learned to read from a tattered copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. When Rosemary joined Miss Beck’s Academy at the age of 7 or 8 she was still unable to read, but by the end of her first term, ‘without any apparent transition period’, she was reading anything that came her way. A lesson there perhaps? Certainly the description of the relaxed and happy days given over to singing around Miss Beck’s piano, declaiming verses from Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, and observing what Miss Beck called ‘the Beauties of Nature’ make one think rather sadly of the world of SATs and League Tables in which children live today.

Sometimes Rosemary’s father was away on foreign postings, and then she and her mother were relegated to digs in places like Westgate, on the bleak north Kentish coast, or to the mercies of Uncle Acton, the good-hearted bad penny of the family, who had spent a brief working life building roads in India, was fat, funny and fond of the bottle, and given to renderings of the ‘Waikiki War Chant’ and ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ on the Hawaiian guitar.

Interspersed with these were Rosemary’s frequent stays in hospital. They were lonely, often painful experiences, but even at this early stage in her life Rosemary could observe and admire the skill of her surgeon, kindly Mr Openshaw, who could cut off a plaster cast from hip to toe in one unceasing movement without leaving a single mark on her body. And of Mr Snow the instrument maker, much loved by the children, who would go to any lengths to make sure that his small patients were comfortable when he fitted them with callipers and splints.

It was after one of these stays that Uncle Acton had the inspiration of installing Rosemary, her mother and Uncle Acton’s long-time companion Miss Edes (Uncle Acton was not the marrying kind) for a six-week break in a bungalow called La Delicia on Headley Down, near Haslemere. Despite the frequent recurrence of what Uncle Acton called his ‘malaria’, which made him strangely unsteady on his feet, it was a magical time, ‘filled with the smell of leaf-mould and pine woods and bonfire smoke and frost; and above all of lamp smitch . . . to me one of those magical smells which open doorways in the mind, letting out the sights and sounds and smells of some other place and time . . .’

There were other magical times too – especially those when she and her father sat down together to look at the albums of his travels, their brown hessian covers ‘folded back with a heart-leap of expectancy’ to reveal fading photographs – of ships and ‘grinning faces in balaclava helmets, with icebergs in the background . . . Pompeii, with the wheel ruts of chariots deeply shadowed by the afternoon sun on a paved street . . . the Lyon Gate at Mycenae in the days when you could pick up shards of Mycenaean pottery as easily as anemones from the rough grass’. The writer in her was storing it all up, just as she was storing up the feel of the marsh country round Sheerness, and of the South Downs, where the family sometimes went to visit her grim Aunt Lucy.

When her father retired from the sea the family moved to Torrington in North Devon, where her father had been born and bred and where they had always taken their holidays. They bought a house called Netherne, perched on its own on high ground on the edge of Dartmoor, and – country people at heart as they had always been – it felt like heaven. They had hens, and vegetables, and an Airedale puppy called Mike, and her father wrote Sailing Directions for the Admiralty in ‘a sort of cabin’ in the garden (a perpetual job as they almost immediately went out of date). Rosemary loved her small bedroom with a view of the crown of a big lilac tree on one side and ‘Orion hanging in at the Dartmoor window’ on the other. She loved the sounds of the curlews coming in from the coast, the owls that ‘perched on the chimney to warm their feet and made eerie noises down to us’, and the magical moment of cockcrow in the first green light of morning, ‘a sound with a bloom on it, like dew, and shaped like a fleur-de-lys’.

The nearby school, however, was not a success. Rosemary left at 14 and went to Bideford Art School, where she was the baby of the class, treated kindly by the other students, but definitely not part of their social world – though in time she became extremely skilled as a miniaturist, whose work would even one day cause a stir at the Royal Academy.

Deep loneliness was beginning to set in, her mother was becoming increasingly depressed and difficult to live with, and neither of her parents could see that Rosemary, at 16 and 17, was in desperate need of company of her own age. So of course she fell in love with any young man who paid her the slightest attention – first with her cousin Edward, a bittersweet experience that ended with the declaration of war in 1939, when Edward, who was in the Navy, went off to join his ship.

Her father went off too, to command his own ship, and Rosemary and her mother were left alone to soldier on at Netherne in increasing isolation. And then, after the war was over, in the summer before the great freeze of 1947, along came Rupert, the son of a recently arrived neighbour, invalided out of the RAF, glamorous with darkly flaming red hair and ‘blazingly-golden hazel eyes’, who spoke to her as an equal – ‘the first person to whom it ever occurred that I could be asked out without my parents’. They grew closer and closer, but then Rupert clearly took fright, and eventually had to tell her that he had fallen in love with someone else. He broke her heart, and I felt my own heart breaking at the description of their last bleak parting: ‘Why does it seem so much more final when somebody goes away in a train than when they drive off in a car?’

Fortunately for us, however, she had just begun to discover writing and before long her first book for children, The Queen Elizabeth Story – ‘written out of heartache, but also out of something set free within myself’ by that searing experience – was accepted by the Oxford University Press.

There she ends her story and the rest, you might truly say, is history. It is a wonderful memoir, and one feels braver somehow, more alive, more philosophical for reading it. Because it is written out of the truth of the heart, it is timeless – the kind of book one can return to and find the same golden qualities again and again.

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Blue Remembered Hills (1983) is now available from Slightly Foxed in a new limited and numbered cloth-bound pocket edition of 2,000 copies, each priced at £10 (plus post and packing). Copies may be ordered by post (67 Dickinson Court, 15 Brewhouse Yard, London EC1V 4JX), by phone (0207 549 2121) or via our website http://www.foxedquarterly.com/.

(NB: Images added for this blog)

Slightly Foxed

2008-02-07T15:27:00.003Z

SLIGHTLY FOXED EDITIONS No. 1.

BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS, Rosemary Sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff is one of the most distinguished children’s writers of our time withover forty historical novels to her name. Blue Remembered Hills is the vivid and touching memoir of her childhood. (see p.13 SF No. 17; also SF No.4).

Rosemary Sutcliff was born in 1920, the only child of a naval father and a pretty, manic-depressive mother with bags of charm and a wild imagination. She suffered from infantile arthritis, known as Still’s Disease, that burned its way through her as a child, leaving her permanently disabled, but this is the very opposite of a misery memoir. It is a record of the growing up and making of a writer, and it is full of poetry, humour, affection, joy in people and the natural world, and the kind of deep understanding that can come out of hard experiences.

Despite moving regularly between naval digs and frequent, lonely stays in hospital, Rosemary’s childhood was, in some ways, enchanted, lived among the vivid sights and sounds of the dockyards, which would later feed into her books. When her father retired from the sea the family moved to Torrington in North Devon - it felt like heaven. However, the nearby school was not a success. Rosemary left at 14 and went to Bideford Art School, where she became a skilled miniaturist, eventually exhibiting at the Royal Academy. In time, feeling cramped by the small canvas of her paintings, isolated in the country and hurt in love she turned to writing and there found success and fulfilment. Blue Remembered Hills is a wonderful, timeless memoir critically acclaimed and much loved since its first publication in 1983.

Sutcliff listed amongst the 50 greatest post war writers

2008-01-05T18:07:00.000Z

Sarah Cuthbertson kindly brought this to my attention:

The Times

January 5, 2008

Rosemary Sutcliff

The 50 greatest postwar writers: 49

click here to see the rest of the article.

The item also makes a link to the Historical Novel Society's appreciation of the author

Sword at Sunset to be reissed

2008-01-05T17:53:00.001Z

Sword at Sunset will be reissued in May 2008 as a paperback by Chicago Review Press. Listed on Amazon the price will be around £7.00 or $15.00. A foreword has been written by Jack Whyte, who himself is an author of a series of novels exploring the Arthurian myths.

Sutcliff reviewed: Sword Song (August 1997)

2007-11-01T15:54:00.000Z

Go for good writing -
Children

Another of Blyton's traits I dislike is her laziness. I don't believe she ever researched anything - unlike her contemporary Rosemary Sutcliff, whose posthumously published Dark Ages saga Sword Song (Bodley Head, Pounds 12.99, ISBN 0 370 323 94 7) is packed with precisely described Viking sea battles and sacrifices in a linguistic smorgasbord of thongs, thralls and fiery-bearded men.

I was never a Sutcliff fan as a child, tiring too quickly of the sun glinting off the halberds of people with names that sound like Haggis Bogtrotterson, but the opening of Sword Song is a stunner: a 16-year-old boy is exiled from his settlement for the manslaughter of a monk who had kicked his dog. Beat that, Melvin Burgess.

Regrettably, the story quavers thereafter, meandering around the coast of Britain as young Bjarni sells his fighting skills to one fiery-beardy after another, but the dense historical detail and rich colours are all still there.

Go for good writing -
Children

Times, The (London, England)
August 23, 1997
Author: Sarah Johnson

Sutcliff reviewed: The Shield Ring (July 1992)

2007-07-18T15:50:00.000Z

Nursery rhyme and unreason -
Children's Paperbacks

Times, The (London, England)
July 11, 1992
Author: Brian Alderson

The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff (Puffin, Pounds 3.99): This story of how the Norse settlers of Butharsmere held out against the Norman invaders is one of Sutcliff's most engrossing novels. It has been too long out of print and this edition should be the cause of much rejoicing.

Sutcliff reviewed: The Shining Company (June 1990)

2007-06-23T15:43:00.000Z

Violent land of our fathers -
Books

Times, The (London, England)
June 9, 1990
Author: Brian Alderson

Estimated printed pages: 2

THE SHINING COMPANY, By Rosemary Sutcliff, The Bodley Head, Pounds 7.95

Y GODODDIN is not a species of baby-talk, but a tale of bloody strife, said to have been written around the end of the 7th century by the Welsh bard Aneirin. It tells how the High Chief of the Gododdin, Mynyddog Mwynfawr, called a hosting of the Celtic tribes at Edinburgh. There, for the space of a year, he trained a war-band of 300 princes and then unleashed them on the invading Saxons at the Battle of Catterick. Everything went wrong, and only one hero returned from the fray. But his exploits and those of his companions were celebrated by Aneirin in ``the Great Song that others will sing for a thousand years".

This Great Song is at the heart of Rosemary Sutcliff's Shining Company, thus bringing Aneirin longer life than he expected. For as he gave elegiac voice to the deeds of hero after hero, so she has taken the names from his telling and has sought to imagine them back int historical reality. Speaking through the persona of Prosper, the son of a Welsh chieftain, and eventually shieldbearer to the knight who returned, she begins by establishing a sense of the closed tribal world of the time after the Romans, and then introduces unbardic perceptions of form and motive. Personal relationships and the countryside of the Dark Ages become vital ingredients in the renewed story, and as the episodes pile up the ride to Edinburgh, the welding of disparate forces into a single fighting group so the reader is made ready for the great setpiece of the battle and the long dying fall of its tragic aftermath.

Such a theme is natural to Sutcliff's art. She is moved by simple concepts of loyalty and integrity that may be as foreign to today's children's literature as they were to the no-baby-talk Gododdin. But by admitting their possibility, while not shirking the real facts of ferocious woundings and pragmatic betrayals, she still persuades us that a bardic reading of the past is sustainable alongside an awareness of its squalor and its indifferent, but unpolluted, landscapes.

Section: Features

Record Number: 1007894754

OpenURL Article Bookmark (right click, and copy the link location):

Violent land of our fathers

http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.new

sbank.com:UKNB:&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0F925AD4B76

8C85B&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated4&req_dat=25636B4CC9A542FB9EC6D4B96A7A8F92

Anthony Lawton's blog has moved ...

2007-06-16T16:56:00.000Z

Dom's contribution is hidden away in the comments, but he points out that Anthony Lawton has started a new blog at: rosemarysutcliff.wordpress.com

Sutcliff on film? Eagle of the Ninth (November 2000)

2007-06-16T15:58:00.000Z

The Roman Eagle has landed: Saturday Premiere

Daily Telegraph, The (London, England)/Financial Times
November 25, 2000

Estimated printed pages: 1

BRITAIN has never had its own Ben Hur. However, hot on the heels of the success of Gladiator, this may change.

Duncan Kenworthy (the co-producer of comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill) has just bought an option on Rosemary Sutcliff's classic children's book The Eagle of the Ninth. Based on the true story of the lost Ninth Hispana Legion, which disappeared somewhere north of Hadrian's Wall in the second century AD, it is a romping tale about a young legionary, Marcus, who ventures into Scotland to look for the missing soldiers, including his father, and their standard.

It is an odd project for Kenworthy but it will be good to see the Romans in Britain for once. Let's just pray that the producer does not want to cast Hugh Grant as Marcus . . .

http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.new

sbank.com:UKNB:DSTC&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=0F288E6

BC1E90901&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated4&req_dat=25636B4CC9A542FB9EC6D4B96A7A8

F92

Sutcliff reviewed: The Shining Company (July 1990)

2007-03-21T15:39:00.000Z

Reliving a glorious past -
Children's Books

Sunday Times, The (London, England)
July 15, 1990
Author: Susan Hill

Estimated printed pages: 5

Rosemary Sutcliff has never tried to ingratiate herself with young readers by making her prose bland and easily digestible. The complexities ofher style are not gratuitous, but reflect the depth and complexity of her subject-matter. Those without an innate historical sense or taste need to be encouraged to read her, because they discover that she not only makes bare facts ``come alive" but attempts to make sense of them, and to illuminate legend, in human terms. She is also an extraordinarily rich, exciting and poetic writer. To those of my generation who thrilled to The Eagle of the Ninth, it is a pleasure to read her latest book, The Shining Company (Bodley Head Pounds 7.99), and find her still at the height of her powers.

The inspiration for it comes from an early northern British epic poem such sources are often the triggers for her fiction about 300 young, keen warriors belonging to the tribe of King Mynyddog in 600 AD who were brought together and trained for a year, as a fighting brotherhood, before being sent out against the invading Saxons. The hero is Prosper, son of Gerontius, a shieldbearer to one of them, and the story concerns him, his close friends and confederates, and his bond-slave. It is a remote time, and values and customs are completely alien to those of our own, particularly the concept of fealty and loyalty to a king, an individual lord, a blood brother. Rosemary Sutcliff gets under the skin of adventurous young men in trying to reveal what made them follow a leader and give their lives gladly in his service. It is as inspiring, and tragic, as any similar war story involving a ``shining company" of golden boys, and this intricate, compellingly imagined and beautifully told story makes period and people sympathetic and comprehensibl in our own time.

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BBC's Eagle of the Ninth, 1977

2007-03-08T20:40:00.000Z

Finally, I found a good photo of BBC's 1977 series of Eagle of the Ninth, showing Aqulia leading his troops. Details of the production can be found here. Marcus Aquila was played by Anthony Higgins. This scene, was, I think also briefly shown in Togas on TV recently, along with a couple of other scenes. Any chance of a DVD release please of the whole series, Auntie Beeb?

From a pedant's point of view, the armour looks dodgy. As it's AD 117 they'd be OK with lorica segmentata, but it looks like scale armour. And the helmets are odd too. Perhaps they are auxiliaries? Nethertheless, I'd rather have a well acted drama with naff costumes than nothing at all ...

Sutcliff and Simon Schama (October 2000)

2007-02-28T16:02:00.000Z

Television Review

Independent, The (London, England)/Financial Times
October 5, 2000

Estimated printed pages: 3

THE PROBLEM with the past is that it just won't stay put: it's always shifting to accommodate our needs, our assumptions about the sorts of people we are. Not long ago, I re-read Rosemary Sutcliff's children's story, The Silver Branch, which is set in Britain towards the end of Roman rule. When I first read it, 25 years ago, I took it as a fairly faithful recreation of the period; second time around, what was striking was how obviously it was the product of the time it was written, the 1950s. The story has two young Romano- British patriots on a spying mission in Saxon-occupied Britain - sleeping in haylofts, evading the brutal Germanic invaders with the help of friendly locals: it's basically a Second World War resistance yarn transposed to the fourth century.

By contrast, Sunday's opening episode of A History of Britain by Simon Schama (BBC2) presented a much gentler picture of the same period. Schama disdained talk of "apocalypse" in favour of gentle change - Roman Britannia "morphed" into the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; the process was "an adaptation, not an annihilation".

Partly, no doubt, the differences between Sutcliff's picture and Schama's reflect advances in understanding. But Schama's version also said something about the way we live now: this was history for a multicultural society, one that embraces difference and defines its relationships with the outside world in terms of trade and economics, not wars and empires. Schama depicted the Roman occupation of Britain in similarly benign terms - the odd violent episode aside, it was a matter of seduction rather than conquest. Hadrian's Wall was depicted as a conduit for trade, not a military frontier.

Full article at:

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Film rights

2007-02-28T12:17:00.000Z

I've been contacted recently by someone from the US trying to find out if a particular book by Rosemary Sutcliff has had the film rights bought. I've passed her onto Anthony Lawton, needless to say. But she did ask if there were any 'fun' titles I'd like to see on film ... I told her the books that are most often mentioned by fans I've met (Eagle of the Ninth* and Mark of the Horse Lord), plus threw one in of my own (Sword at Sunset). Lets see if it comes to anything in the coming years ...

But which of Sutcliff's books would you like to see on the big screen?

*Yes, I know that Eagle of the Ninth was serialised by the BBC, but it's a fat lot of good if the Beeb neither shows it now, nor issues it on DVD

The Witch's Brat, Red Fox, 1990

2007-02-07T10:49:00.000Z

Red Fox, Paperback, 1990

Flowering Dagger

2006-11-27T14:26:00.000Z

On exploring Google Book Search, I found a Rosemary Sutcliff short story. It's called Flowering Dagger and is in a collection called Within the Hollow Hills: an anthology of new Celtic writing, edited by John Matthews, published 2000 by Steiner Books. A few sample pages can be found here. It was originally published in The Real Thing, edited by Peggy Woodford, Bodley Head, 1977. Other contributors include: Robin Williamson, R.J. Stewart, Caitlin Matthews, David Spangler, Peter Vansittart, Henry Treece and Margaret Elphinstone, plus others.

Other books by or mentioning Sutcliff extracted on Google Book Search include: The Wanderings of Odysseus: The Story of "The Odyssey", Essential Fiction Genres Student Book by Peter Ellison, 100 More Popular Young Adult Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies by Bernard A. Drew, Honey for a Child's Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life by Gladys M. Hunt, Killing the Celt by Tomas Runmhar, Black Ships Before Troy: the story of the Iliad, etc.

Update on searching this blog

2006-10-27T01:00:00.000Z

If you want to search this blog specifically (to see if we've covered something) there is now a way to do this properly. In the bar on the right of the screen there is a Technorati search box. Just type in what you're looking for, and it'll bring back the results.

UK Paperback Cover: The Silver Branch

2006-10-26T17:35:00.000Z

The Silver Branch, Oxford University Press, 2000

Sending in cover shots

2006-07-22T21:36:00.000Z

Ross kindly asked about sending in other cover shots of Sutcliff's books. People are always welcome to do this, but please note the following:

1. So you don't waste your time, check the blog's archives first to see if it's already been included. You can either trawl through the monthly archives (see right-hand side bar) or search the blog, using the search facility at the very top of the screen. However, I've just tried it now, searching on Sword at Sunset, and it's only brought up the msot recent blog! Perhaps it's not working properly at the moment? I have tried to give the posts clear headings, so you should be able to pick the titles out pretty easily.

2. Ensure your image is about 25kb. A bit higher or lower is OK, but I'm still on dial-up, so anything really large takes ages to download. I'm also then in the position of editing the image down anyway for uploading to the blog. So keep the images of a modest size.

Looking forward to seeing some new covers!

UK Hardback Cover: Sword at Sunset

2006-07-21T15:27:00.000Z

Sword at Sunset, Bookclub, 1963
With thanks to David Mace who sent this to us.

Song for a Dark Queen: brief review

2006-04-20T18:48:00.000Z

Tony Keen, in his blog comments briefly on Song for a Dark Queen.

Update on 23rd April: Tony Keen comments on Rosemary Sutcliff.

Teachers' Guide for Sutcliff's novels

2006-04-10T09:03:00.000Z

Thank you to Sarah Johnson for mentioning this on her blog:

Farrar, Strauss and Giroux's (Sutcliff's US publisher) 12 page Teachers' Guide brochure

UK Paperback cover: Frontier Wolf

2006-03-10T10:00:00.000Z

Frontier Wolf, Puffin, 1984

UK paperback cover: Song for a Dark Queen

2006-02-12T22:30:00.000Z

Song for a Dark Queen, Red Fox, 1996

UK Paperback cover: Blood and Sand

2005-12-05T08:23:00.000Z

Blood and Sand, Coronet, 1987

A Rosemary Sutcliff editor

2005-12-02T09:42:00.000Z

I recently came across the Ancient Worlds website. They have a forum for Children's Literature and this post by one of Sutcliff's editors will doubtless be of interest. Here is the same poster acknowledging that Sutcliff is out of fashion. And here are some comments on Sutcliff's book in general.

UK Hardback cover: Sword Song

2005-12-02T09:35:00.000Z

Sword Song, Bodley Head, 1997

UK Paperback cover: The Lantern Bearers

2005-10-14T15:00:00.000Z

The Lantern Bearers, Oxford University Press, Paperback, 1972

Dutch cover: The Lantern Bearers

2005-09-05T08:05:00.000Z

Dutch The Lantern Bearers, supplied by Robert Vermaat: awaiting details.

Spot the deliberate mistake. Lorica segmentata went out of use probably around the 3rd century; the story is set in the 5th century.

Dutch hardback: Sword At Sunset

2005-09-05T08:00:00.000Z

Dutch Sword At Sunset, supplied by Robert Vermaat: awaiting details.

Definitely the Richard Harris effect again ... But at least he's not in a grumpy mood this time!

That's Sutcliff without an 'e' thank you!

2005-08-21T13:51:00.000Z

Over on Anthony Lawton's blog, he says he too has noticed how often Rosemary Sutcliff's name is spelt with an 'e' on the end

He's also added some new entries, complete with photos, so hop over and check it out

Anonymous comments

2005-08-21T13:46:00.000Z

Due to comments which primarily seem to be advertising, I have changed the comments facility to 'registered users' only. This is regrettable, but needs to be done; this blog is not for commercial advertising.

If you already have a blogger blog, there will be no problem if you wish to comment. If you don't have a blogger blog, it's easy to sign up, and you don't necessarily have to keep up with your blog (though it's fun, and you might find it addictive!) If you really don't want to sign up, then drop us a line at the above address; I'll be happy to post your comments for you. Looking forward to hearing from you!!!!

Things to come: Dutch books covers, as supplied by Robert Vermaat, more British book covers, plus eventually, I'll get around to typing in that Rosemary Sutcliff interview of mine.

Paperback cover: The Mark of the Horse Lord

2005-08-20T10:35:00.000Z

The Mark of the Horse Lord, Oxford University Press, Paperback, 1975

When I waited for Rosemary Sutcliff

2005-07-27T22:31:00.001Z

Robin Rowland, who wrote the review of King Arthur as linked in this blog a while back, has written a short piece about why he likes Rosemary Sutcliff in his blog.

The Mark of the Horse Lord

2005-07-10T18:50:00.000Z

Some Random Thoughts after Reading The Mark of the Horse Lord

I was delighted to hear that you've set up a Rosemary Sutcliff weblog. Reading through the posts and links, I was inspired to drop everything and re-read for perhaps the seventh or eighth time my favourite of her novels for children – The Mark of the Horse Lord. I am, incidentally, the proud possessor of a first edition, courtesy of my husband who received it as a fourteenth birthday present, long before I knew him.

Opening the book reminded me of the thrill of my first reading – this was a copy borrowed from the school library. I remember how quickly Sutcliff drew me into the world of her characters and caught me fast in the web of her storytelling, so that I was no mere looker-on, but in turn one of those belonging to Phaedrus's gladiator family, then a tribesman dancing to the rhythm of the wolfskin drum, warming himself at the house-place fire, or taking up his weapons for battle.

And as I read, the web was spun again, as strongly as the first time. I was enthralled and moved. And at the ending, I felt the same sharp pang of shock I had felt at that first reading, when I didn't want it to end the way it did, though something in me knew that this was the only fitting end; a more comfortable one would have been a betrayal of the story and the people who lived it. And it in its way, though tragic, the ending left me with a feeling of exhilaration, as I’m sure it was meant to.

So – The Mark of the Horse Lord has for me lost none of its magic. But what is that magic? I don't want to kill the dream with over-analysis but I do want to explore a few thoughts about Sutcliff’s writing that came to me as I read.

Sutcliff’s thrilling and thought-provoking storytelling is woven out of strong threads that draw the reader into the world of The Mark of The Horse Lord, and indeed into all of Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels:

The characters who, in all their quirky individuality, spring fully-formed from the pages and take possession of the reader’s heart.

The themes that drive the characters: friendship and love, belonging and not-belonging, the struggle with some crippling handicap of mind or body, or both – and, perhaps above all, sacrifice: the willing sacrifice of the chieftain or king for his people. All these are themes that Sutcliff comes back to again and again, but of all her novels for children it’s perhaps in The Mark of the Horse Lord that they’re played out most fully. And these are demanding themes, whose darkness and complexity make the novel as rewarding for adults as it is for children.

The world the characters live in which becomes as real to readers as their own world. In Sutcliff’s hands, the natural world of weather and landscape, of fauna and flora, is more than a backcloth; it’s a character in its own right, vivid and three-dimensional. Thanks, I’m sure, to her early training as an artist and keen observer of nature, she paints with a few deft strokes everything from the broad sweep of heather moors to the wistfulness of a winter twilight, from the green, fragrant canopy of a forest down to the detail in a falling leaf or a flower petal. This is a world that we readers can touch and smell and feel, that we can, in effect, inhabit. And the imagery Sutcliff uses to bring her world alive is entirely right and fitting for its purpose. It strikes me that there’s no self-conscious artifice in its making. It’s natural and unforced, hewn simply out of the fabric of the world her people live in.

The Dark Age Novels of Rosemary Sutcliff by Charles W Evans-Gunther - Part III

2005-06-23T11:00:00.000Z

The final Dark Age book is The Shining Company and is, as far as I can see, completely divorced from the previous books. Rosemary Sutcliff has returned to the first person for this book, with Prosper telling his own story. It begins with Prosper, the son of a Welsh lord, being given an Irish slave - Conn - and we swiftly meet Luned, who makes up the youthful threesome. Their lives were soon to change when Prosper becomes second shield bearer to Prince Gorthyn ap Urfai of Rhyfunnog who is riding out to join Mynyddog's warband at Din Eidin. Rhyfunnog was a district of North Wales in Gwynedd Is Conwy, and in an area that is now called Clwyd.

They join the year-long preparation for a battle against the Angles of Bernicia. As the months pass by Conn, who is with Prosper, becomes interested in smithying and eventually is freed to become a smith. There we come across one of Miss Sutcliff's trademarks - an object that links up parts of the story. At the beginning of the novel Conn becomes fascinated by the stories told by Phanes of Syracuse, a merchant, and his Archangel Dagger, which has been brought from Constantinople. This, and Phanes, appear later in the story and have a profound effect on both Prosper and Conn. After the preparations, comes the campaign. Though the Britons cause the Angles great losses, the enemy eventually triumphs. The wounded Gorthyn is saved by Prosper and returns to Din Eidin. The novel ends with Gorthyn and Prosper making their way with the Archangel Dagger to Constantinople, and Conn returning to Luned in North Wales.

Rosemary Sutcliff's novels are well worth reading, even though they are in the main juvenile publications. Like all novelists, she puts her own peculiar stamp on them. In the Dark Age novels and the Roman series, we see some of her trademarks - in the passage of a youth to adulthood, her love of dogs and horses, healers and strange objects that lend continuity. Though she follows some of the traditional events, characters and so on, she always adds greater reality to the story.

Taking into account the information that was available in the period of writing of the earlier books, I feel that Rosemary Sutcliff's representation of the Dark Age may be near to the mark. You may not agree with how she put the character in a particular position; for example - Arthur being Ambrosius Aurelianus's nephew - but the over all feel seems right. Also, the way she depicts the everyday life of the various people is hard to fault. I do feel that her way of showing the growth of change from Roman, Romano-British to modern British is correct. Few people can claim purity of bood - no English person is pure English, and the same is true for Welsh, Irish or Scottish people. There are certain people in the British Isles that can trace their ancestors back to Normans who came over with the Conqueror, but they are not Norman now. The Light of the earlier novels did not go out - it changed into a different sort of illumination.

Bibliography

Fisher, Margery, 1986, Bright Face of Danger

Thompson, Raymond H, 1987, 'An Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff' Avalon to Camelot Volume II, No 3 (See a version of this at: The Camelot Project, Rochester University )

Townsend, John Rowe, 1971, A Sense of Story: Essay on Contemporary Writers for Children

Wintle, Justin & Fisher, Emma, 1974, The Pied Pipers

END

The Dark Age Novels of Rosemary Sutcliff by Charles W Evans-Gunther - Part II

2005-06-11T22:57:00.000Z

All of Rosemary Sutcliff's novels are worth reading; they are not only good stories but believable. One of the signs of a good novelist is that when you read their works you think you are reading about real people and real happenings. Also, you become drawn into the story and feel for the characters. This is very true of Miss Sutcliff's works. She was especially good at creating a reality from so few facts - you almost get the impression that she knows more about the subject than the experts. Interestingly, she had Roman army units at Exeter in The Eagle of the Ninth when archaeologists said there were not any. However, since the 1950s considerable evidence has been found at Exeter to prove otherwise. It is known that Rosemary Sutcliff did the necessary painstaking research to get herself into the feel of the period, but there still seems to be something almost uncanny about her work, almost as if she had lived in the time she was writing about. She did hint on a number of occasions that she may have some belief in reincarnation, but certainly she felt more at home in the pre-medieval period. It is without doubt that her best books are about this far-away time.

The first of Rosemary Sutcliff's Dark Age novels is The Lantern Bearers, the tale of Aquila, son of Flavian, how he survives the Saxon slavery, escapes and joins Ambrosius Aurelianus to defend Britannia against the growing threat of Anglo-Saxon domination. Originally, Aquila is a Roman soldier, but when the last of the legions leave (no actual date is given) he deserts and stays with his family. Unfortunately, his father and most of the servants are killed in a Saxon pirate raid, his sister Flavia is kidnapped and he is left to die. However, a separate band of pirates takes Aquila as a slave and return to their homeland. The young man grows up with the Saxons, learns their language and finds out that they are people just like his own kind.

When in back in Britannia, Aquila makes his way west and north to join Ambrosius Aurelianus. In the mountains of Arfon, he meets for the first time a young boy called Artorius - Artos the Bear - Arthur:

"He headed for the winding cleft in the hillside ... More than half way up ... he found a small boy and a hound puppy very intent on a hole under a brown tumble of last year's fern. He would have passed by without speaking and left them to it, but the small boy sat up and grinned at him, thrusting back a shock of hair the warm silvery-mouse colour of a hayfield in June, and the puppy thumped his tail; there was something irresistibly friendly about both of them that he stopped, without meaning to ..."

Aquila eventually marries Ness, has a boy child, and names him after his father - Flavian. Through his stay with the Saxons, his real name was forgotten and he became known as Dolphin because of the tattoo he had on his arm. When Flavian is born, Aquila's friends call the boy Minnow, son of Dolphin. The battles with the Saxons increase and the novel ends with impending war and the young Arthur grown in strength is now ready to lead a band of companions into battle.

In the first chapter of Sword At Sunset we are introduced to another object that has a similar significance to the Aquila family's dolphin ring:

" ... I saw that set in the pommel was a great square amethyst. It was so dark in colour as to be almost of the Imperial Purple ... clear on the pale surface-sheen of the gem, I saw an Imperial eagle, intaglio cut, grasping in its claws a double M; and spelled out backward around the edge, turning the sword to catch the light on the letters, the single word 'Imperator' ... It is Maximus' Seal.

I remember I stood for a long time looking at the Great seal ... oddly moved by the link across the years with my great-grandsire, the proud Spanish general who married a princess of Arfon ..."

We are told that Arthur was the bastard son of Utha, Ambrosius' brother, and grandson of Constantine son of Magnus Maximus. This is a very interesting point worthy of discussion, and I would suggest it has its origins in the controversial ideas of Welsh scholar Arthur Wade-Evans.

In this version of the story of Arthur, Miss Sutcliff depicts Arthur as a cavalry leader under the command of Ambrosisus Aurelianus. He is depicted as a human being - not a superman or medieval king - a caring man, a clever man, but with flaws which eventually lead to problems. Rosemary Sutcliff obviously used many sources - including Geoffrey of Monmouth - and though far from the traditional romantic version of the tale, it does contain some elements of these later stories.

Amongst the characters in Sword At Sunset are some traditional Welsh ones such as Cai, Bedwyr and Gwalchmai - and, of course, Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere) but using Geoffrey of Monmouth's version of her name, Guenhumara. In this novel, Bedwyr takes the part of Lancelot in the famous love triangle which develops. Sword At Sunset tells the story of Arthur in his own words - from the buying of horses in France, to the terrible winter in Scotland, his wars, his loves, his friendships and his failures. It continues the tale begun in The Lantern Bearers leading to the death of Ambrosius in a hunting accident, the victory at Badon, Arthur being proclaimed Caesar, the break-up of the companions by Medraut (Arthur's son) and the end at Camlan. This is a marvellous story, well written by Rosemary Sutcliffe, and though it includes many of the traditional elements in Arthur's life, it also includes something of Miss Sutcliff's own ideas - such as Gwalchmai as a healer, the Little Dark People, and the continuation of the story of the Aquila family (Aquila dies at Badon, Flavian is Arthur's shield-bearer, and Flavian's son, called Minnow by Arthur, becomes a soldier like his forefathers).

Dawn Wind, the third of the Dark Age books, continues with the Aquila family and Rosemary's juvenile novels. It concerns Owain, who is trying to find a place in the ruins of his world. The Anglo-Saxons have come to dominate the land that is to become England, and the Britons have recently been defeated in a great battle. Owain and a hound, whom he calls simply Dog, have survived. Miss Sutcliff is very good when talking about dogs and horses, and both play important parts in this novel. In the early part of the story, Owain is living with an old famer and his wife and one Sunday attends Mass at which the priest lays out the situation:

"Brethren, the Light goes out and the Dark flows in. It is for us to keep some lamps burning until the time we can give it back to the light the world once more ..."

The world seems to be crumbling around the Britons and literally when Owain enters Wroxeter hoping to find it still occupied. Ruins are everywhere, and the only living soul he finds is Regina, a young girl who has survived on her wits. Together, they leave the ruins in hope of finding a better life. However, Regina falls ill and Owain sells himself into Saxon thralldom to save her. Now a slave of the hated enemy, the view point is swiftly rotated to show what life for these Germanic people is like and we learn that they are not so much different. Owain settles in and becomes a part of Saxon society. One excellent character in the story is old Uncle Widreth, who tells the children stories and philosophises:

""When you are my age'" the old man was saying, "When you are my age, you'll have learned how little all things matter. Life is fierce with the young and maybe more gentle with the old. Only, while one is young, there is always the hope that one day something will happen; that one day a little wind will rise ...""

And it is the dawn wind that changes Owain's life and brings his freedom - freedom eventually to meet up again with Regina and the hope of returning to those old friends made in the hills of Wales.

With the re-union of Owain and Regina, the Dark Age series concerning the Aquila family ends. However, the dolphin ring is passed from father to son until the male line comes to an end. According to The Shield Ring, a female member of the Aquila family becomes part of a Norse family and after her the ring passed from father to son, but is not longer purely British. It is certain that Miss Sutcliff wanted to show that the British of later time were not simply Celtic or Saxon or Norse, but a mixture of these and more. From Clustunium in Etruria to Calleva in Britannia, and from the hill to Wales to the crags of Cumbria, the Aquila family changed from Roman to British.

END OF PART II

A dolphin intaglio

2005-06-11T11:00:00.000Z

Supplied by Graham Sumner

Dragon Slayer, Puffin, 1966

2005-06-11T10:47:00.000Z

Rosemary Sutcliff's Dolphin signature

2005-06-11T10:29:00.000Z

The Dark Age Novels of Rosemary Sutcliff by Charles W Evans-Gunther - Part I

2005-06-04T08:40:00.000Z

This article by Charles W Evans-Gunther was first published in Dragon Vol 4, No. 5, Winter 1993, pages 4-10. It is reproduced here by kind permission of the author

When I began to work on this article, I thought it would means reading four books. However, I ended up going through eight novels. I found that they were linked, and it seemed correct to read them in a particular sequence. Interestingly, the first is The Eagle of the Ninth and the last The Shield Ring. Chronologically, the books run:

The Eagle of the Ninth (1954) - 129 AD
The Silver Branch (1957) - 284 AD
Frontier Wolf (1980) - 343 AD
The Lantern Bearers (1959) - 410+ AD
Sword At Sunset (1963) - 5th century
Dawn Wind (1961) - mid-late 6th century
The Shield Ring (1956) - 11th century

All of the above are linked. The Shining Company (1990) set in the late 6th or early 7th century, is not connected with the others. All will become clear.

" ... Rome is hollow at the heart and one day she will come crashing down. A hundred years ago, it must have seemed that all this was forever; a hundred years hence - only the gods will know ... If I can make this one province strong - strong enough to stand alone when Rome goes down, then something may have been saved from the darkness. If not, the Dubris light and Limanis light and Rutupiae light will go out. The lights will go out everywhere. "

Taken from a scene in The Silver Branch where cousins Justin and Flavius meet Emperor Carausius, the above statement lays the basis for most of the books to come. Throughout these novels, there is a strong sense of light being smothered by an on-coming darkness. Again and again the analogy is used.

In the first of the series, The Eagle of the Ninth, we are introduced to Marcus Flavius Aquila and told that he had been initiated into the raven level of Mithraism, and this gives one 'clue' to the reference of light and darkness. The religion of Mithras, once rivalling Christianity for top place in the hit parade of religions in the Roman Empire, was dualist, derived from the much earlier Persian Zoroastianism. Here we have a constant war between Good - the Light - and Evil - the Darkness. Also, the analogy related to the more actual extinguishing of the light of Roman civilisation. The Roman Empire was becoming surrounded on all sides by 'barbarians' and it would be, in the eyes of the 'civilised' Romans (citziens of the Empire), the end if these savages took over. Rosemary Sutcliff shows the fears, but then turns the camera around and gives you the 'barbarians'' point of view. Often, the hero of the story begins with great hatred of his enemy, but grows to understand the reality of the situation.

This must have been what the Late Romans and Romano-Britons felt where they saw the destruction brought about by the Anglo-Saxon raids. To them, the light of Roman civlisation was going out, and their whole way of life, and thinking, was changing. However the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, Franks, Visigoths and other Germanic tribes in Europe, would not extinguish the light, but transform it into a different light - a different civilisation. There can be little doubt that there were raids on Roman Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, Picts and Scots, without settlement, but when these tribes eventually set up home, it became a different picture. They did not bring the darkness with them - their gods were gods of light and darkness - but they certainly did not consider themselves the bringers of darkness. Possibly they saw the Romans as the evil dominators, but it may not have been a fight of good against evil, rather a struggle for land. However, there is no need to go so deeply into this, Miss Sutcliff's novels have another link - the dolphin ring.

More than anything in these seven books, the characters are bonded together by actual relationship - all being part of the Aquila family. We are introduced to the family in The Eagle of the Ninth, and meet it throughout all the novels, though in Sword At Sunset they take a minor part to the dominant figure of Arthur, and in The Shield Ring the character is only a very distant relative.

The Aquila family originated in Etruria, Italy, and came to Britannia with the father of Marcus Flavius Aquila. He had been in the 9th Hispana Legion which was defeated in the north and disappeared. Marcus finds out the truth and we are introduced for the first time to the concrete link. Marcus, disguised as a healer, is amongst the Epidii tribe in northern Britain when he is showed an object by their chieftain:

"Marcus took it from him and bent to examine it. It was a heavy signet-ring; and on the flawed emerald which formed the bezel was engraved the dolphin badge of his own family ... suddenly across twelve years or more, he was looking up at a dark, laughing man who seemed to tower over him. There were pigeons wheeling around the man's bent head, and when he put up his hand to rub his forehead, the sunlight that surrounded the pigeon's wings with fire caught the flawed emerald of the signet-ring he wore."

It is eventually returned to Marcus by Liathan of the Epidii.

The ring appears for the first time in The Eagle of the Ninth, but it continues ... In The Silver Branch we meet descendants of Marcus - Marcelus Flavius Aquila - and his cousin Tiberius Lucius Justinianus. Flavius shows Justin the ring:

"It was a heavy and very battered signet ring. The flawed emerald which formed the bezel was darkly cool ..."

Alexios Flavius Aquila, in Frontier Wolf is sent to Scotland, and as he approaches Castellum:

"He found that he had dropped his gaze from the distant fort, and was staring down at his bridle hand: at the flawed emerald ring with its intaglio-cut dolphin on his signet finger. An old and battered ring that had come down to him through a long proud line of soldiers ..."

In The Lantern Bearers, the ring belongs to the father of the main characters. Aquila's father, Flavian:

" ... was fondling [the dog] Margarita's ears, drawing them again and again through his fingers, and the freckled sunlight under the leaves made small, shifting sparks of green fire in the flawed emerald of his great signet ring with its engraved dolphin."

Flavian is killed in a Saxon raid, and the ring is taken by a pirate whose son later marries Flavia, Aquila's sisters, who had been kidnapped by the Saxons. The ring was given to her as a wedding gift and then later in the story given by Flavia to Aquila.

Rosemary Sutcliff wrote an adult novel about Arthur - Sword At Sunset - but kept some of the characters from her juvenile novels. Aquila, who married Ness and had a child whome he called Flavian, is seen with Arthur in Arfon:

"Save for his horses, the only thing of value that he possessed was the flawed engraved signet ring engraved with its dolphin badge, which had come from his father and would one day go to his son ..."

Aquila is killed in the Battle of Badon and the ring is passed by Arthur to Flavian. A few generations go by and in Dawn Wind we find Owain wounded, but alive, on a battlefield. Searching through the dead, he finds his father and his brother Ossian. As he is about to leave the scene:

" ... something on his father's hand gave off a spark of greenish light under the moon. He bent forward with a gasp. The great ring with its dolphin device cut in the flawed emerald of the bezel was one of the first things he could remember. It had been his father's and his father's before him, away back to the days when the Legions first marched through Britain."

The ring finally appears, strangely enough, in The Shield Ring, a book about Norse people holding out against the dominance of the Normas, published in the 1956 before most of the other books mentioned above. In this, Bjorn is given by his foster-father Haethcyn

" ... a small thing that caught the green fire from the lantern ... It was a ring: a massive gold ring of ancient workmanship, much scarred and battered with a bezel of dark green translucent stone, on which was engraved a device of some sort ..."

- a dolphin. Haethcyn tells him it was made:

"... by the people of Romeburg."

that it was Bjorn's father's and:

" ... his father's before him, and his father's before that. It came out of Wales with that British foremother of yours that I once told you of, and was old even then, and had come down to her - for she was the last of an ancient line - from the high far-off days from the people of the Legions whence her line was sprung. So the story has passed down with the ring from father to son; ..."

It would seem that Miss Sutcliff had thought well ahead from Marcus Flavius Aquila, especially since The Eagle of the Ninth was published in 1954 and The Shield Ring, with Bjorn, over a thousand years later, being published in 1956. This was before The Silver Branch, the next in the Roman series of stories. In many ways, this shows the kind of writer Rosemary Sutcliff was, and that she devoted a lot of herself to the creation of a background beyond the next book she was writing. I don't know how much of this she did, but going from one book to the other indicates very good continuity. Certain characters can be linked very easily, while others are a bit harder, and yet the connections are so well produced that a virtual family tree can be constructed from Marcus Flavius Aquila to Owain in Dawn Wind. Without any doubt, The Lantern Bearers and Sword At Sunset are inseperably linked. In the interview by Raymond H Thompson for Avalon to Camelot, Rosemary Sutcliff states:

"The Lantern Bearers is offfically a children's book, but I would claim that my books are for children of all ages, from nine to ninety. Sword at Sunset is officially an adult book. But the two are really part of the same story. The Lantern Bearers finishes exactly three days before Sword At Sunset starts ..."

END OF PART I

Things to come!

2005-05-28T14:35:00.000Z

Charles Evans-Gunther, author of The Dark Age Novels of Rosemary Sutcliff (an article which appeared in Dragon Magazine in 1993) has kindly given me permission to reproduce his article on this blog. I'm currently working on typing the article up, and scanning a picture which went with it. The article will appear in three parts, starting June 4th. It mostly covers those novels linked by the Aquila family's emerald ring with the dolphin engraving, and offers some really interesting insights into Sutcliff's work. Watch this space!

Welcome to ...

2005-05-26T07:30:00.000Z

Welcome to Sarah, who has joined the blog team! She's a long time fan of Rosemary Sutcliff and will be contributing a few pieces to the blog

Richard Harris in a sulk? - Sword at Sunset

2005-04-24T13:05:00.000Z

This cover looks rather fantasy medieval - armour, sword, crown and throne! Safe to say, it doesn't reflect the content of the book.

Sword At Sunset, UK, Coronet, Paperback, 1971

Honourable mention for Sutcliff!

2005-04-23T20:48:00.000Z

In my hunt for other covers to 'Sword at Sunset', I came across this article which reviews the lamentable recent movie 'King Arthur' but also goes onto survey some of the recent fiction about Arthur:

Warrior queens and blind critics by Robin Rowland, CBC News Online, July 13, 2004

I'll put the 1971 Coronet cover (a touch of the Richard Harris in 'Camelot' I think) on separately. The writer of the article seems to think 'Sword At Sunset' is still in print, but I don't think that's so unless Tor are reissuing their 1980s edition?

Death of the Corn King by Barbara L Talcroft

2005-04-19T10:49:00.000Z

If you want to read a literary analysis of Sutcliff's books, it's worth looking at:

Talcroft B.L. 1995, 'Death of the Corn King: King and Goddess in Rosemary Sutcliff's Historical Fiction for Young Adults,' The Scarecrow Press

To give you an idea of the content, here is a list of chapters:

The Kingship Themes
The Themes in Celtic Setings
The Themes in Roman Settings
The Themes in Arthurian Settings
The Themes in Post-Arthurian Settings

It also includes a short biography, and a list of Rosemary Sutcliff's publications.

Big-boned as a Jute's - Sword at Sunset

2005-04-19T10:34:00.000Z

I don't own this copy, but the picture on the cover hints that the illustrator might well have read at least the opening pages of the book. It fits in with: '... my face looked back at me, distorted by the curve of metal, but clear enough in the light of the dribbling candles, big-boned as a Jute's, and brown-skinned under hair the colour of a hayfield when it pales at harvest-time." (page 15, 1963 edition) In addition, the sword on the left of the cover looks like a long-bladed spatha, which is actually correct for the period!

Sword At Sunset, US, Tor, Paperback, 1987

Portable copy - Sword at Sunset

2005-04-19T10:30:00.000Z

This is my portable copy. If I think I might want to read 'Sword' while I'm away from home, this is the copy I'll take with me!

Sword At Sunset, UK, Coronet, Paperback, 1989 (2nd impression; first Coronet Impression 1971)

First copy - Sword at Sunset

2005-04-19T10:29:00.000Z

'Sword at Sunset' is Rosemary Sutcliff's take on a historical 'King' Arthur. Consequently, this novel is set in 5th century AD Britain, where Roman rule has come to an end, and British Artos rises to power.

This (see below) is the cover of my first copy of 'Sword at Sunset' I was 12 or 13 and waiting to be signed up for the Adult Library so I could get a copy of this book by inter-library loan, as my library didn't have a copy on the shelves. Somehow I'd found out about its subject matter (this was in the days before the Internet, so I don't know how) and knew I wanted to read it. But, just before I got into the adult library, this copy appeared on the Library's 'Sale' shelf. Couldn't believe it! It cost me the princely sum of 25p. I now have a more pristine copy, which I keep in a cupboard, but this is my 'original' ex-library and pretty battered copy :-)

Sword At Sunset, UK, Hodder & Stoughton, Hardback, 1963

Blue Remembered Hills: a recollection by Rosemary Sutcliff

2005-04-18T15:04:00.000Z

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Paperback, 1983

Rosemary Sutcliff, Arundel, 1985

2005-04-18T14:53:00.000Z

I took this photograph when I went to interview her in Arundel in Sussex. In the future, I hope to post the interview on the blog. The only problem is that it is in print form, and I'll have to type it all out again! Yes, I've got a scanner but my OCR software doesn't work :-(

Rosemary Sutcliff

This blog

2005-04-18T12:32:00.000Z

This is where I will deposit information about historical fiction author Rosemary Sutcliff, including web links, books, and anything else I can find. The links on the right hand of the page will take you to various places, including the Historical Novel Society, my article on Rosemary Sutcliff (which appeared in the HNS journal Solander 8, 2000), and Anthony Lawton's blog.

Anthony Lawton is Rosemary Sutcliff's literary executor. As the writer of an article about her, I am often asked if there is a biography being produced. Mr Lawton was able to say that although one was not being written now, there would a biography in future.

More to come and feel free to contribute!