Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘The Eagle of the Ninth Book’ Category

The ‘Inside A Dog’ blog enthuses about old favourite Rosemary Sutcliff

Posted in Readers, The Eagle (of the Ninth) film, The Eagle of the Ninth Book, tagged on 21/12/2011 | Leave a Comment »

 

Groucho Marx, Sig Ruman and Margaret Dumont

Groucho Marx  once said: ‘Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read!’. Hence one blog about books:  Inside a Dog. The blog’s author recently caught up with The Eagle film in Australia, which prompted him to enthuse about Rosemary Sutcliff  “all over again”.

Today I finally got to see the movie based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle Of The Ninth. That’s made me think about her books all over again – I love them!  I think she’s the greatest writer of historical fiction for children and teens in the twentieth century. In fact, judging by what I’ve read in the last eleven years, maybe the best of this century too.

Source: Rosemary Sutcliff – an old favourite | Inside A Dog.

Read Full Post »

Lindsey Davis’s Top Ten Roman books includes The Eagle of the Ninth | The Guardian

Posted in history, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Eagle of the Ninth Book, tagged on 04/04/2011 | 1 Comment »

The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff was in Lindsey Davis’s top ten Roman books in The Guardian in February 2009. Davis has written the Falco Roman detective novels.

“Somewhere about the year 117AD, the Ninth Legion, which was stationed at Eboracum, where York now stands, marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again.” Hooked? If not, there’s no hope for you. A wonderful novel, for children of all ages.

The full list of books was:

  1. Daily Life in Ancient Rome by Jérôme Carcopino
  2. Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome by Lesley Adkins and Roy A Adkins
  3. Rome and Her Empire by Barry Cunliffe
  4. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide by Amanda Claridge
  5. The Colosseum by Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard
  6. Ancient Inventions by Peter James and Nick Thorpe
  7. The Lost World of Pompeii by Colin Amery and Brian Curran Jr
  8. Roman Britain by Keith Branigan.
  9. The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
  10. I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Read Full Post »

“Verily ’tis a hit” | BBC’s Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo review The Eagle

Posted in Radio, TV, Film, Video, Internet, The Eagle (of the Ninth) film, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Eagle of the Ninth Book on 28/03/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo have a wonderful couple of hours every Friday afternoon on BBC  Radio 5, talking about films. This week they ‘reviewed’ The Eagle film based on Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth – indeed they made use of an email sent to them by one Anthony Lawton of this parish. Although it does not feature in this clip, at the end of the section in the full programme they pronounce:

“Verily, tis a hit!”

(more…)

Read Full Post »

The Eagle film, movie | Reviewed in The Telegraph

Posted in Radio, TV, Film, Video, Internet, The Eagle (of the Ninth) film, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Eagle of the Ninth Book, tagged on 28/03/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth has been loved by the young and the young-at-heart since its publication in 1954. More thoughtful and certainly more historically informed than the Boy’s Own-style adventure quests to which it has sometimes mistakenly been likened, it has all the ingredients of a terrific adventure thriller: an epic quest narrative, strong characters, the tangled interplay of pride, loyalty and masculinity.

Director Kevin Macdonald (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland) is also fascinated by those qualities. Working with screenwriter Jeremy Brock (Last King … , Mrs Brown), he brings his sharp, muscular intelligence to bear on this always enjoyable, if not always successful treatment of a story that was also told just last year, in Neil Marshall’s Centurion.

Read Full Post »

A great film in its own right but … | BBC4′s Front Row reviews The Eagle with girlish hope

Posted in Radio, TV, Film, Video, Internet, The Eagle (of the Ninth) film, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Eagle of the Ninth Book, tagged on 25/03/2011 | 2 Comments »

Rosemary Sutcliff’s book The Eagle of the Ninth was much loved by Rachel Cooke, writer for The Guardian and The Observer, which left her with “girlish hope in her heart” as she went to see the film, The Eagle. She spoke of the film on BBC 4 in the UK, on the review programme Front Row, with Mark Lawson.

I went to see this with so much girlish hope in my heart because it was one of my favourite books, and what I feel about it is its a great film on its own terms, but if you were a Rosemary  Sutcliff fan I think you might be disappointed by it. It’s not as nuanced as the book, it’s not as tender or as  lyrical as the book. It’s a very angry frenetic film, it’s very one note, there’s not much light and shade. It’s a buddy film with axes and bearskins.
Source: Listen at 1.05 minutes here

Are you a Rosemary Sutcliff fan, and what did you think of the film? Do post your reactions and reflections in the comments here; or a longer review at the You Write tab (see at the top of the page) … And if you are not someone who has up to now read Rosemary Sutcliff, I do hope the film leads you to the book, and indeed to The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers, two books in a trilogy of Roman novels, all published by Oxford University Press in film tie-in versions.

More on the film The Eagle on this blog

Read Full Post »

‘It would seem that Sutcliff was right after all” | The Eagle and The Eagle of the Ninth | More on The Roman Ninth Legion’s mysterious loss | BBC News

Posted in Archaeology, history, Sutcliff Discovery of the Day, The Eagle of the Ninth Book, tagged on 16/03/2011 | 1 Comment »

Ninth Legion stampRosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth is grounded in a view about what happened to the ninth Roman legion. The fate of the legion continues to be debated, most recently on the BBC website, by Miles Russell of Bournemouth University.

The British problem was of deep concern to Roman central government. Thanks to a tombstone recovered from Ferentinum in Italy, we know that emergency reinforcements of over 3,000 men were rushed to the island on “the British Expedition”, early in Hadrian’s reign. The emperor himself visited the island in AD 122, in order to “correct many faults”, bringing with him a new legion, the Sixth.

The fact that they took up residence in the legionary fortress of York suggests that the “great losses” of personnel, alluded to by Fronto, had occurred within the ranks of the Ninth.

Archaeological evidence of the legion’s fate is scarce

It would seem that Sutcliff was right after all.

It was the Ninth, the most exposed and northerly of all legions in Britain, that had borne the brunt of the uprising, ending their days fighting insurgents in the turmoil of early 2nd Century Britain.

Source: BC News – The Roman Ninth Legion’s mysterious loss.

See also on this blog a post on The symbolism of The Eagle of the Ninth | What happened to the ninth legion: Part IX?

Read Full Post »

Writer Amanda Craig on historical novelist and children’s writer Rosemary Sutcliff

Posted in Autobiography & Biography, Newspapers, The Eagle (of the Ninth) film, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Eagle of the Ninth Book, tagged , , , on 16/03/2011 | 4 Comments »

Interview here in The Times newspaper with your blog’s author – about Rosemary Sutcliff, the book The Eagle of the Ninth and the film The Eagle.

Read Full Post »

Is The Eagle from Silchester (inspiration for Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth) the eagle standard of the ninth legion??

Posted in Sutcliff Discovery of the Day, The Eagle (of the Ninth) film, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Eagle of the Ninth Book on 25/02/2011 | 2 Comments »

The Silchester Eagle, basis for The Eagle of the NinthA great visit to Silchester yesterday, organised for journalists covering The Eagle film … I saw for the first time the Silchester Eagle, in the museum in nearby Reading. It was smaller than I imagined. It was the artefact that, with the mystery of the disappearance of the ninth legion from military records, stimulated Rosemary Sutcliff to imagine her bestselling The Eagle of the Ninth historical novel.  (more…)

Read Full Post »

Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth in twenty languages

Posted in Books and Stories, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Eagle of the Ninth Book on 23/02/2011 | Leave a Comment »

This is a fully up to date listing of all nineteen languages that Rosemary Sutcliff‘s The Eagle of the Ninth has been published in, in addition to the OUP editions in English. (This listing is from OUP)

English (UK hardback special edition) – Folio Society
English (audiobook – straight reading) – Naxos Audio Books
English (audio – dramatisation) – BBC/AudioGo
English (India) – Penguin India
English (USA) – Square Fish (an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Brazilian Portuguese – Editora Record
Czech – BB Art
Danish – P. Haase & Sons (out of print)
Dutch– Leopold
German – Verlag Freies Geistesleben
Spanish – Plataforma Editorial
French – Gallimard Jeunesse
Greek – Aiora Press
Hungarian – Alexandra Konyveshaz Kft.
Italian – Arnoldo Mondadori Editore
Japanese – Iwanami (out of print)
Korean – Sigongsa
Polish – Wydawnictwo Telbit
Portuguese – Gradiva Publicacoes
Romanian – Editura Litera International
Russian – Azbooka-Atticus
Serbian – Laguna
Swedish – Forlaget Barnstenen (out of print)
Thai – NanMee Books
Turkish – Ithaki Publishing

(I am in the process of tracking down all the websites for the publishers/foreign editions: all help welcome. Post links at comments please!)

Read Full Post »

‘Vivid and real’ | Rosemary Sutcliff’s writing | Brian Keaney

Posted in Readers, The Eagle of the Ninth Book on 22/02/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Rosemary Sutcliff's famous novel was first published in the UK in 1954

UK hardback 1954 cover

Of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth, writer  Brian Keaney commented on Goodreads:

First published in 1954, The Eagle Of The Ninth was once to be found in every children’s library in the UK. For the last fifteen or twenty years, however, Rosemary Sutcliff’ has been somewhat forgotten as the solid, carefully written style of her books has given way to fiction that thrusts itself more brazenly upon its readers.

Hearing that there was a film coming out in 2011, I thought I would renew my acquaintance and I am very glad that I did. Based upon the mystery of the fate of the Ninth Legion which marched from its station in what is now York some time around AD 117 and was never seen again, this is the story of a young Roman soldier, the son of a centurion of that ill-fated legion, who sets out some eight years later to discover his father’s fate, it is a terrific read.

Rosemary Sutcliff makes the world of Roman Britain as vivid and real as if it were still standing to this day. Her characters are strongly drawn and her observation of nature is wonderfully well conveyed in tightly-written prose. This is a delight to read and a timeless classic

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »