Review of The Flower of Adonis | Historical novel for adults by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Times

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Review of The Flower of Adonis | Historical novel for adults by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Times

09/04/2011 by Anthony

Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Flower of Adonis reviewed in The Times of London in 1969 (before it was behind an electronic paywall!).

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Posted in Criticism, Research, and Reviews, The Flower of Adonis | Tagged Ancient Greece, historical fiction | Leave a Comment

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rosemary sutcliff
"An impish ... irreverent writer of genius" (The Guardian)
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- Hope @hodderchildrens you reminding hodder adults to celebrate great Rosemary Sutcliff #bestseller Sword at Sunset published by H&S in 1963! | 22 hours ago
- I keep thinking about Rosemary Sutcliff observation: "I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning". In life as in #fiction? | 22 hours ago
- @CamplingPenny you'll find many fiction egs of intelligent kindness by 'the healing kind' in history novels of Rosemary Sutcliff #intelkind | 22 hours ago
- RT @MichaelNewbury: @rsutcliff Cover of my much-prized 1st ed of Sword at Sunset. http://t.co/eK02WxIInA | 23 hours ago
- Literary agent @FurnissLawton struck by pre-internet scrapbook cuttings RS used for 1963 bestseller Sword at Sunset http://t.co/QTdEb1RE24 | 23 hours ago
- RT @martinlake14: finished Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff and gave it 5 stars. A glorious book, a masterpiece. amzn.to/11QWiYo | 1 day ago
- @tinelala Only just seen yr tweet March. Sword at Sunset great place to start Rosemary Sutcliff. Or go Roman, The Eagle of the Ninth. | 1 day ago
- @MichaelNewbury glad 4u Sword at Sunset by @rsutcliff truly great novel. In '63 so did more: originally was bestseller. Now @AtlanticBooks. | 1 day ago
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in praise of rosemary sutcliff

Guardian newspaper editorial 'in praise of' Rosemary Sutcliff, published in 2011,
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.
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