Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Simon’ Category

Rosemary Sutcliff Facebook-likers vigorously criticise Booktrust so-called ‘Best 100 children’s books of last 100 years’ | No Rosemary Sutcliff on it!

Posted in Radio, TV, Film, Video, Internet, Simon, Sun Horse Moon Horse, Sword at Sunset, Sword Song, The Capricorn Bracelet, The Eagle of the Ninth Book, The Lantern Bearers, The Light Beyond the Forest, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Shining Company, Warrior Scarlet on 12/11/20132013 | 2 Comments »

Over at the Facebook page for Rosemary Sutcliff  readers have been robust about  the error of The Booktrust’s ways in excluding Rosemary Sutcliff from their attempt to list the 100 best children’s books of the last 100 years. I asked for help in compiling a broadside.

I’m not sure this will help, but the books I enjoyed when I was 11 still engage me at 63! I’ve never felt that Rosemary Sutcliff writes for children alone. There’s probably no more poignant tale than The Lantern Bearers. Also, she has a talent for dialogue in an historical context which is unsurpassed. Most children’s authors have nothing remotely like it. (Roy Marshall)

Rosemary Sutcliff’s books last in the mind and heart. I am 63 now and they stand out as Beacons from my childhood. I have reread many in mid and later life and they are even better. I am with Roy, The Lantern Bearers is my favourite – so evocative and of our own end times too. (Rob Patterson)

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Roman books, starting with the Eagle of the Ninth (but I read all the others – The Mark of the Horse Lord was probably the one that really inspired me), were one of the influences that led me to study archaeology.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

In praise of historical and children’s novelist Rosemary Sutcliff | A Guardian newspaper editorial in 2011

Posted in Autobiography & Biography, Simon, The Rider of the White Horse on 05/11/20132013 | Leave a Comment »

I am reminded by a tweet I noticed today that Rosemary Sutcliff was praised in an editorial in the Guardian newspaper 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.

Read Full Post »

Simon (1953) | A novel of the English Civil War by Rosemary Sutcliff

Posted in Simon, tagged , , on 29/01/20122012 | Leave a Comment »

Of Simon by Rosemary Sutcliff, written some sixty years ago, the Washington Post and Times Herald in the USA (April 4th, 1954) wrote: ‘it is a colourful story…..(and) Miss Sutcliff‘s interest in character makes even the minor characters interesting … she is adept too at communicating a sense of the Devon countryside”. The story?

All of England was taking sides for the King of Parliament in the 1640’s. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Simon | A novel of the English Civil War

Posted in General, Readers, Simon on 21/01/20112011 | 1 Comment »

Rosemary Sutcliff’s 1953 historical novel and children’s book Simon – the subject of a comment by Anne in an earlier post – is a story about competing loyalties in the midst of a civil war. The Washington Post and Times Herald on April 4th, 1954 said:

It is a colourful story … (and) Miss Sutcliff’s interest in character makes even the minor characters interesting … she is adept too at communicating a sense of the Devon countryside.  (more…)

Read Full Post »

Rosemary Sutcliff and Elzabeth Goudge | English Civil War Novels

Posted in General, History, Simon, The Rider of the White Horse, tagged on 20/01/20112011 | 1 Comment »

Children’s writer and historical novelist Rosemary Sutcliff and Elizabeth Goudge were linked, ‘Anne’ comments in response to an earlier post:

Interestingly, Sutcliff and Goudge corresponded with each other, and Goudge wrote publicity comments to go with both Sword at Sunset and Rider on a White Horse.

To me Rider of the White Horse goes hand-in-hand with Elizabeth Goudge’s ‘White Witch’, another novel of the English Civil War which is also magically evocative.  (more…)

Read Full Post »

Rosemary Sutcliff on English Civil War children’s book, historical novel Simon 1953

Posted in Autobiography & Biography, History, Simon, tagged , , , , on 09/04/20102010 | Leave a Comment »

Rosemary Sutcliff said about the historical accuracy of her children’s book Simon written early in her career in 1953, set in the English Civil War of the 17th century:

“Most history books deal with the final campaign of the civil war in a single paragraph, and the Battle of Torrington they seldom mention at all. In this story I have tried to show what that final campaign in the west was like, and to re-fight the battles fought over my own countryside. Most of the people I’ve written about really lived; Torrington Church really did blow up, with 200 Royalist prisoners and their Parliamentary Guard inside, and no one has ever known how it happened, though Chaplain Joshua Sprigg left it on record that the deed was done by ‘one Watts, a desperate villain’ “.

Read Full Post »

Library Thing Polyanna loves Simon

Posted in Illustrators and Illustration, Novels, Stories & Books, Readers, Simon, tagged , , on 19/02/20102010 | Leave a Comment »

Lovely, lovely book; one of my favourite books ever. It’s about the English Civil War, and manages to convey information about and the perspective of, both sides pretty fairly, which is rare in books on the subject. Although (more…)

Read Full Post »

%d bloggers like this: