Rosemary Sutcliff CBE (1920-92)
Description: For award-winning, internationally-acclaimed author Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92). By Anthony Lawton: godson, cousin & literary executor. Rosemary Sutcliff wrote historical fiction, children's literature and books, films, TV & radio, including The Eagle of the Ninth, Sword at Sunset, Song for a Dark Queen, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Silver Branch, The Lantern Bearers, Dawn Wind, Blue Remembered Hills.
Simon, (1953) by Rosemary Sutcliff, is one of her early books of historical fiction & children’s literature. It deals with aspects of the English Civil War(s) (1642-51), what some (e.g. historian Christopher Hill) call the English Revolution . In her Author’s Note she wrote:
“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 the final campaign in the west was like, and 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 the chaplain Joshua Sprigg left it on record that the deed was done by “one Watts, a desperate villain”.
Rosemary Sutcliff CBE (1920-92)