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Archive for the ‘The Shining Company’ Category

“Catreath, Cataractonium as the Romans had called it” | Catterick now | In Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shining Company

Posted in Diary, Frontier Wolf, The Shining Company on 30/06/2012 | 3 Comments »

One of the pleasures of curating this blog about Rosemary Sutcliff, the eminent historical novelist and children’s writer (who regular readers will know was a close, much-loved relative of mine) is the contributions you readers make by way of ‘comments’ on particular posts, and also the ‘You Write!’ tab. A recent 1988 diary entry mentioned  Catraeth. Jane mused about Catterick camp and Jane picked up the baton:

The Catterick Garrison is still in operation – it’s the largest BritIsh Army garrison in the world.

The old Roman fort of Cataractonium will be familiar to those who’ve read The Shining Company – it’s the setting for the last desperate stand of the Company against the Saxon forces of Aethelfrith, Lord of Bernicia and Deira.“Catreath, Cataractonium as the Romans had called it, was a double cohort fort, and so there was room enough for all of us within the crumbling defences.”

Cataractonium’s marching camp also makes an appearance: “And so, with the forest reaching up towards us, we came to the remains of yet one more fort in that land of lost forts, and made our last night’s camp. It was not much of a fort, maybe only a permanent marching camp in its time, and being on the edge of the forest country the wild had taken it back more completely than those of the high moors…. little remained of the buildings but turf hummocks and bramble domes”.

Although it isn’t one of the Aquila family sequence, there’s one of those “aha” moments in Shining Company which readers of Sutcliff work enjoy – a connection made with Frontier Wolf (set a couple of centuries earlier) when young Prosper and a couple of companions out on a training exercise camp at the (now ruined) Cramond fort where the action in Frontier Wolf takes place. Sutcliff uses the linking device very effectively as a way of emphasizing continuity.

And ,of course, as well as making me wiser about Catterick and Catraeth, and reminding me of Frontier Wolf , this prompts me to  ask all you readers and contributors – regular and occasional – please do tell us some more “Aha” moments …

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Rosemary Sutcliff preferred the US edition of her historical novel The Shining Company

Posted in The Shining Company, tagged on 29/06/2012 | 4 Comments »

In the light of today’s (29th June) entry in Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1988 diary, I went back to her novel The Shining Company. Rosemary, my godmother and cousin, kindly gave me and my family  a copy  when the US edition was published. She reveals her preference for it in the letter she enclosed (which I had forgotten!)

Letter from Rosemary Sutcliff to Anthony Lawton about The Shining Company

The US edition of Rosemary Sutcliff novel The Shining Company

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“The Men went to Catraeth” becomes more and more complex by the day now … (Rosemary Sutcliff Diary, 29/8/88)

Posted in The Shining Company, tagged , on 29/06/2012 | 5 Comments »

June 29th Wednesday. Very hot and sultry after the chilly past few days. Geraldine for tea. Long phone call from Dai Evans with the information I asked him to get me about Catreath, the photostats to be posted off to me tomorrow. “The Men went to Catraeth” becomes more and more complex by the day now.

‘Catraeth’ has featured several times in diary entries. “The Men went to Catraeth” is perhaps the provisional title for the chapter Rosemary Sutcliff was writing at this point. In the final version of her award-winning historical novel The Shining Company,which was published in 1990, there is a chapter – this chapter? – called “The Road to Catraeth”.  Set in A.D. 600, the novel was based on Y Gododdin, one of the earliest surviving examples of Welsh poetry. It was transcribed in the twelfth century but commemorated an event in the sixth: “an elegy for slain heroes and a eulogy of their excellence and bravery as fighting men” (in the words of one commentator, here). The poem begins with a fragment of poetry which speaks of Catraeth as the site of a great battle.

Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth gan wawr …
Men went to Catraeth with the dawn,

Their fears disturbed their peace,
A hundred thousand fought three hundred
Bloodily they stained spears,
His was the bravest station in battle,
Before the retinue of Mynyddog Mzvynfawr.

The story Rosemary Sutcliff tells in The Shining Company is this.

In northern Britain, Prosper becomes a shield bearer with the Companions, an army made up of three hundred younger sons of minor kings and trained to act as one fighting brotherhood against the invading Saxons. Life is secure until Prince Gorthyn arrives with his hunting party to kill the white hart. Prosper tries to save the unusual beast and, when found out, is surprised to learn that Prince Gorthyn admires his daring. Prosper asks to serve the prince, but it is not until two years later that he receives a summons: King Mynyddog is raising a war host of three hundred younger sons to fight the invading Saxons, and Gorthyn needs a second shieldbearer. Answering the call, Prosper sets out immediately to meet the prince and travel to King Mynyddog’s fortress at Dyn Eidin. For a year the three hundred men – the Companions – and their shieldbearers train until they can think and act as one fighting brotherhood. And when word reaches them that the Saxon leader has taken yet another kingdom, they set out to attack the Saxon stronghold at Catraeth. It is here that Prosper must face his greatest challenge, as treachery strikes the Companions from an unexpected source.

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… Think I see my way out of the immediate Catraeth problem, though there are still plenty ahead …(Diary, 30/5/88)

Posted in Diary, The Shining Company on 30/05/2012 | Leave a Comment »

May 30th Monday. Another Bank Holiday! Yesterday’s wind got up again. The pups have spent the whole day yelling to be let out & chasing squirrels. Betty S came in for a while, chiefly to catch Sheila for a chat this morning. Think I see my way out of the immediate Catraeth problem, though there are still plenty ahead.

The “Catraeth problem”, which is a rare diary comment about her work-in-progress, first surfaced in Rosemary Sutcliff’s diary on 28/8/88. It relates to a battle which features in her novel The Shining Company.

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… wish I didn’t feel so muzzy and vaguely unreal … (Diary, 28/5/88)

Posted in Diary, The Shining Company, tagged on 30/05/2012 | 1 Comment »

May 28th Saturday. Diane washed my hair for me this morning. Great relief. Head beastly – not of course improved by hair wash. Wish I didn’t feel so muzzy & vaguely unreal. Have hit all kinds of complications at the moment with Catraeth, too

I was unsure for a good while about the second last word. Was it the name of a character and thus part of a rare comment in Rosemary’s diary about her writing work? Was it ‘cathedral’ – she wrote some community play or plays at some point.

excerpt Rosemary Sutcliff diary 28/5/88

I have however, I think, worked it out. It is a point about her writing, but about an event not a character. At this time Rosemary Sutcliff was writing her award-winning book The Shining Company, her young adult and children’s novel which included the Battle of Catraeth (which is believed happened around or a little before 600AD). The battle is commemorated in Y Gododdin, a medieval Welsh poem. It is a collection of elegies to the men of the kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who died fighting Angles at Catraeth .

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The Shining Company by Rosemary Sutcliff | Based on Y Gododdin poem | Reviewed in The Times

Posted in Criticism, Research, and Reviews, The Shining Company on 14/04/2012 | Leave a Comment »

The Shining Company, the historical novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, was published to excellent reviews over twenty years ago, although it was awarded a major US award for children’s literature last year. This was the review in The Times newspaper, by Brian Alderson who was a  pioneer of the study of children’s literature in Britain.

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’sThe 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.

Source: The Times, June 9, 1990, Saturday by Brian Alderson

More on this blog about Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shining Company

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Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novel for children The Lantern Bearers won The Carnegie Medal in 1959

Posted in Awards, Song for a Dark Queen, The Eagle of the Ninth Book, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Shining Company, Tristan and Iseult, tagged on 10/04/2012 | Leave a Comment »

Cover of Japanese Edition of The Lantern Bearers

Rosemary Sutcliff won the Library Association Carnegie Medal in 1959 for her historical novel for children (“aged 8 to 88″ in her view) The Lantern Bearers. The Medal is awarded every year in the UK to the writer of an outstanding book for children. First awarded to Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post, the medal is now awarded by CILIP: The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. Both the Carnegie Medal and its sister award, the Kate Greenaway Medal are awarded annually. The 2012 shortlist was recently announced, and the winners will be named on Thursday 14th June.

The Library Association started the prize in 1936, in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), a self-made industrialist who made his fortune in steel in the USA. The winner now receives a golden medal and some £500 worth of books to donate to a library of their choice. Rosemary Sutcliff also won or was nominated for many other awards in the UK and USA. (She won other awards in translation). She

Full list of Carnegie Medal winners here

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Rosemary Sutcliff won The Carnegie Medal for historical novel The Lantern Bearers in 1959

Posted in Awards, Song for a Dark Queen, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Lantern Bearers, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Shining Company, Tristan and Iseult, tagged , , on 31/03/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch, and The Lantern Bearers are sometimes called a trilogy. Rosemary Sutcliff won the Library Association Carnegie Medal for The Lantern Bearers in 1959. The Medal is awarded every year in the UK to the writer of an outstanding book for children. The Library Association started the prize in 1936, in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), a self-made industrialist who made his fortune in steel in the USA. His experience of using a library as a child led him to resolve that “if ever wealth came to me that it should be used to establish free libraries”. He established more than 2800 libraries across the English speaking world and, by the time of his death, over half the library authorities in Great Britain had Carnegie libraries.

First awarded to Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post, the medal is now awarded by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The winner receives a golden medal and some £500 worth of books to donate to a library of their choice. Rosemary Sutcliff also:

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The Shining Company award-winning novel by Rosemary Sutcliff

Posted in The Shining Company, tagged on 09/02/2011 | Leave a Comment »

The Shining Company by Rosemary SutcliffSee now, for a good blade, one that will not betray the man in battle, rods of hard and soft iron must be heated and braided together. Then is the blade folded over and hammered flat again, and maybe yet again, many times for the finest blades … So the hard and soft iron are mingled without blending, before the blade is hammered up to its finished form and tempered, and ground to an edge that shall draw blood from the wind. So comes the pattern, like oil and water that mingle but do not mix. Yet it is the strength of the blade, for without the hard iron the blade would bend in battle, and without the soft iron it would break.
Source: Goodreads quotations from Rosemary Sutcliff

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Book Awards won by Rosemary Sutcliff

Posted in Song for a Dark Queen, Sutcliff Discovery of the Day, The Lantern Bearers, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Shining Company, Tristan and Iseult on 06/02/2011 | Leave a Comment »

I am trying to make accurate my list of all book awards Rosemary Sutcliff was given or nominated for. This is my summary so far: can readers help me expand and improve it?
  • 1959: The Carnegie Medal, The Lantern Bearers
  • 1968: The Hans Christian Andersen Award, nominated
  • 1971: Zilveren Griffel – The Silver Pencil, in Holland
  • 1972: The Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Tristan and Iseult
  • 1974: The Hans Christian Andersen Award, highly commended
  • 1978: The Other Award, Song for a Dark Queen (A children’s book award focusing on anti-sexist, anti-racist titles in the UK).
  • 1985: The Phoenix Award, The Mark of the Horse Lord
  • 2010: The Phoenix Award, The Shining Company

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