Random Jottings

Dawn Wind and the Roman novels - Rosemary Sutcliff

Last year I read for the first time, yes the first time, The Eagle of the Ninth, and I wondered why I had taken so long to read this superb story.  My predeliction had always been for Rosemary Sutcliff's books set in later times, my favourite being The Armourer's House and I felt no inclination to read her Roman stories at all.

Well more fool you I hear you cry and you would be right but, as I have said in my earlier post, I do not really regret it as I have now discovered these books when I have the time and leisure to read them and they are simply glorious. I cannot think of another word to describe them. It is difficult to say why I love them so much but it is just the joy of the writing. It is total perfection and that is all there is to it.  From the minute I opened Dawn Wind I was caught up and breathing and feeling the life and sorrow of Owain until the end when one hopes he has finally found happiness.

At the start of the book Owain is injured after a battle against the invading Saxons and his family are killed.  He stumbles across an old couple Priscilla and Priscus who take him in and nurse him back to health. They become fond of him and would like him to make their home with him on their farm as they have no children but Owain feels compelled to leave and seek his people.  On the way he meets Regina, a begger girl, all alone in the world and they join forces.  When she falls ill and Owain realises he has to find somewhere for her he leaves her with a family who will care for her and offers to become a thrall/Slave if they will look after her. But the family do not need another such and Owain has to leave her and instead joins the household of Beornwulf

"The master of this house says that he does not want another thrall, but the Gods have been good to me; there is a small son in my house and because of that I shall add to the Intake land when home from this wayfaring and because of that there is room in my house for another thrall. Therefore, I have told him I will take you off his hands, for a gold piece, you and the dog together and he will keep his side of the bargain and care for the woman-child"

And thus begins Owain's servitude.   As the years pass he becomes a trusted and valued slave and after saving his master from drowning in a wreck which comes ashore, he is given his freedom and he knows he can finally leave and seek Regina.   But his plans are thwarted once again when Beornwulf is killed in battle and before dying asks that he stays and looks after his son until he passes his fifteenth year when Owain will be finally free to go.   And so he stays.

"he had hardly thought of Regina for years. Long ago it had seemed to him that she must have died and even his memory of her had grown thin and pale so that he could see through it as one sees through a curl of wood smoke.  Now, suddenly, he was remembering more vividly that he had ever remembered in his life before, Regina coming towards him, her thin face sparkling with a kind of grave delight, holding out her hands to him with the blue tit cupped between them; the jewel blue of its cap, the blue flash and the whirr of wings as she set it free......from that moment he knew with absolute certainty that even if he never saw her again, Regina was alive and because of that he could go on"

There have been moments in all of the books I have read by Rosemary Sutcliff  where she has reduced me to tears and this is no different and the fact that I feel such sorrow at a certain happening in Dawn Wind is proof of the power of her writing.

Slightly Foxed are reprinting the Roman novels and the final two, Sword Song and The Shield Ring are due this coming September and my order is already in.  Do take a look at them here. Apart from being such wonderful books and such wonderful editions, the original illustrations are retained. In the Eagle of the Ninth the illustrator was C Walter Hodges, one of my favourite childhood reading illustrators, and in this title it is Charles Keeping.

I said in my review of Eagle of the Ninth that it was a glorious book. So is this one. 

Recently received and current reading

After a couple of weeks of not being able to concentrate on anything I have finally started on my Lockdown Pile (formerly my To Be Read pile which I have renamed).  Still not sure I can face anything to heavy but I am getting there. Such a strange time at the moment, I seem to be living in a state of suspended animation and my mind has gone to pot. But here goes with Wot I am Doing and Reading...

Crossed Skis - Carol Carnac.   This is one of the British Library Classic Crime series which I adore. I do not like all of them, but even those that do not enchant me are fascinating to read because of the time they were written, they reflect social attitudes of the time and, in the final analysis (call me shallow) the covers are gorgeous.

Carol Carnac wrote under this name and E C R Lorac and I have read quite a few of the latter. The Carnac books that I have read (I have managed to track down titles a few on ebay and in small publishers) are mixed and some of the writing is a bit "purple" in places. They are a mixed bag but this one is really good.  Inspector Brook of Scotland Yard is called in after a house fire in which is discovered an unrecognisable burnt body.  One lead emerges - a lead which suggests the involvement of a skier.  The story then switches to a merry group of holiday makers on a skiing holiday in the Austrian Alps.  It is clear that one of them is an impostor and a murderer but who? I admit that I was leaning towards one person and then applied the Agatha Christie rule - if it is obvious then it is wrong. But then I thought but suppose that is what the author wants me to think in which case.....

So I gave up and was proved resoundingly WRONG.   Great read and an exciting finish.

Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell. Garlanded by great reviews, raves and bloggers on twitter saying how wonderful it was, I overcame my misgivings as I had tried and failed with some of her earlier books. Perhaps you are wrong Elaine so I get it and, once again, gave up. It is in a style I just cannot take and it is written in the Present Tense which drives me DEMENTED.  So many readers think this author is wonderful so there is a lack in me somewhere.

My Husband Simon - Molly Panter-Downes.   Another book from the British Library and I am going to write separately about this as I love this author and this book was slightly out of her ordinary. More later.

Blue Remembered Hills - Rosemary Sutcliff. A memoir of her childhood and it is as beautifully written as all her books. Rosemary suffered from juvenile arthritis knows as Still's Disease leaving her disabled. But she rises above it and this book is sheer delight from start to finish. I had an old battered copy and I am most appreciative of Slightly Foxed for being so generous as to send me one of their neat, handbag sized editions which are so beautifully produced.  I have loved this author since I was a child but only recently embarked on her books set in Roman Britain as it was not a period of history in which I was interested and I tended to lean towards her Tudor books (Brother Dusty Feet, The Armourer's House etc) so I was a latecomer to these. I have found them quite quite wonderful and here is a link to an earlier post.

Writer's London - A Guide to Literary People and Places by Carrie Kanie and Alan Oliver.  Oh this is simply gorgeous. I know I keep using that word but it is appropriate.  The introduction reads as follows:

"To step out into the streets of London is to walk in the fotssteps of Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, John Dryden and Lord Byron. Since the time of Chaucer, writers as diverse as Heman Melville and Barbara Cartland have worked, played and loved in London. Many of the greatest books ever written can trace their their origins to this wondrous city"

The book is organised by loosely defined districts so I first checked the areas that I know so I looked at Bloomsbury, then Covent Garden and Marylebone and it became clear to me very quickly that I need to re-explore with this book in hand and also go further afield.   This is a fascinating book and while I cannot leave the house at the moment when the circumstances change this book is going to come into its own.

That is enough for today. I have also read reprints of another Golden Age writer of crime, Moray Dalton which I shall be posting about and have started the latest Inspector Montalbano books which I adore.

There is no cricket this year, Queen's has been cancelled and so I have no excuse for tackling all the reading which is piling up.

I daresay I shall find one though...

Stay safe and well everyone

Rosemary Sutcliff - Slightly Foxed Christmas Prize draw

A few weeks ago I read Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff in the gorgeous new edition from Slightly Foxed. I had not read these Roman Britain novels as a child as I always preferred her stories set in the Tudor period. Well, I missed out on a treat then, but discovered them later on in life where I think I appreciated them more than I would have done as a teenager.  My thoughts on Eagle of the Ninth were posted here.

Since then I have read the next book in the series, The Silver Branch, and found the same enchantment, the same breathless excitement in the fight and/or flight scenes. I do not know how she does it, but I found them totally gripping and filled me with tension until I finished reading.  Sue Gainsford recently wrote about the two books on the Slightly Foxed website and this is what she had to say about the final battle:

"Near the end of The Silver Branch (1957) comes a nail-biting, heart-pounding account of the epic battle, nearly a hundred years later, that famously ended in the destruction of Calleva (modern Silchester, where still the evidence of former glories and catastrophes can be glimpsed). As the battering-ram beats down the great gates of the basilica, and the horde of screaming barbarians pour through, with slaughter in their hearts, fire leaps up to the rafters, engulfing those sheltering there in waves of black, acrid smoke. High up in the blazing building the young surgeon Justin Aquila is, like his ancestor Marcus, careless of his own life – ignoring the advancing flames he cradles an elderly, fatally wounded gladiator and comforts him by conjuring up memories of the crowds who cheered his victories long ago, in the arenas of Rome. It is magnificent stuff"

Yes it is magnificent stuff and the power and beauty of Sutcliff's writing is quite breathtaking.  There are two other books in this series, The Lantern Bearers and Frontier Wolf. They are due to be published in the autumn of 2020 and I am not sure I can bear to wait that long - but I will. Well, I have to....

What I love about these new editions is that they retain the original illustrations. The Eagle of the Ninth was illustrated by C Walter Hodges who I absolutely love. (I have a copy of the Little White Horse on my shelves, a very old hardback edition with his enchanting drawings and I cherish it) and The Silver Branch by the  by the equally wonderful Charles Keeping. I love the way these illuustrations surround the text on certain pages, like a tapestry and so beautifully drawn and imagined.

This is a slightly wonky picture taken from my copy but I just wanted you to see just how these marvellous black and white drawings add to the narrative

Now those lovely peeps at Slightly Foxed have very kindly said they will send a copy of the first two novels in this series to a lucky recipient. They post all over the world so there is no border limit here.

So I will ask those of you who would like the chance to lay your mitts on these WONDERFUL books to leave a comment below and tell me which is your favourite Rosemary Sutcliff novel. Though this will have no bearing on the choosing of the winner (I will draw names out of a hat) I am just interested in hearing about the stories you love by this author.

Today is 2 December and I will leave the draw open until 6 December and I will make the draw then. I want to leave plenty of time to enable the winner to receive the books before Christmas.

And if you do not win, then please consider sending a bijou bank transferette to Slightly Foxed and buy them. You will not regret it.

Good luck xx

The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff

The question I asked myself when reading this simply wonderful book, was why have I not read it before?  I am sure there are many of you, O Gentle Reader, who ask the same.  I loved Rosemary Sutcliff as a child and teenager but the books I read were Brother Dusty Feet, Simon, The Queen Elizabeth Story and my most favourite of all, The Armourer’s House. These were all set in the Tudor period and the Eagle of the Ninth and others were all dealing with the Roman and early ages in which I had little interest.

In the last few years Slightly Foxed have reprinted, to my utter delight, the Carey family novels written by Ronald Welch. I read all of these in my youth and adored them and they became very difficult to track down and, when found, were very expensive.  Slightly Foxed were very good to me and gave me several review copies which I shamelessly begged for. I then realised they were limited editions and felt conscience stricken and made sure I purchased the rest.

Now these wonderful peeps are reissuing the four Sutcliff novels set during the last years of the Roman occupation of Britain and with the original illustrations to boot. I looked at them, do I want them I thought? I never read them. But oh they are so gorgeous. Yes I will. So The Eagle of the Ninth and the Silver Branch arrived and I sat down to start Eagle.

It is a simply glorious book. In the foreword by the author we are told that around the year AD 117 the Ninth Legion which was stationed near where York now stands, marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes and was never heard of again. Eighteen hundred years later during an excavation at Sichester a wingless Roman Eagle was dug up. Nobody knows why it was there just as nobody knows what happened to the Ninth Legion and Rosemary Sutcliff put these two mysteries together and wrote this book.

Centurion Marcus Flavius Aquila had asked to be sent to Britain because of his father who had been in the vanishing Ninth Legion and he hoped that he might find out what had happened to him.   When involved in a local skirmish some months later he is badly injured and his career as a soldier comes to an end. He then resolves to find the missing Eagle of the Ninth.  He has an uncle in Britain with whom he convalesces and lives and while there saves the life of a slave, Esca, who he buys and who becomes his companion and friend.  It is he who accompanies Marcus when they set off on their journey to the north of England to search for the Eagle and solve the mystery.

While this part of the book and the lead up to their mission is fascinating, it is after they track down the missing Eagle (pretty sure I am not giving anything away here) that the book becomes enthralling.  They are hunted down by their pursuers and it is totally thrilling and exciting and had me on the edge of my seat. I was not expecting to feel that at all and it kept me pinned to my sofa for the rest of the afternoon until I finished it.

And that was when I started to wonder Why have I not Read this Before? And to contemplate my idiocy.  But then I changed my mind for the simple reason that after reading voraciously all my life I have made a discovery. I have found a book, and three more to follow, which is such a joy and has delighted me so much.  Not often that happens and when it does it is wonderful.

Oh the writing. What can I say? everyone who has read Sutcliff will be laughing at my rediscovery of just how superb is her prose.

"The autumn was a bad time for Marcus, feeling wretchedly ill for the first time in his life, always in pain and face to face with the wreckage of everything he knew and cared about.....he was desperately homesick for his own land for now that they seemed lost to him, his own hills grew achingly dear.....the shivering silver of the olive woods when the mystral blew the summer scent of thyme and rosemary and little white cyclamen among the sun warmed grass...and here in Britain the wind moaned through the desolate woods, the skies wept and the gale blown leaves pattered against the windows..."

 And this - so beautiful

"The soft uncertain lamplight cast a delicate web of radiance over the table, making the red Samian bowls glow like coral, turning the withered yellow apples of last year's harvest to the fruit of the Hesperides, casting a bloom of light over the fluted curve of a glass cup, kindling there a pointed scarlet flame in the heart of a square flask of Falernian wine, strangely intensifying the faces of the men who leaned each on a left elbow round the table"

I have the second book in the series to read and the other two are winging their way towards me as I speak. These books are superbly produced so elegant to look at and to hold and, for me anyway, the bonus that they are illustrated by C Walter Hodges who is one of, if not my most, favourite illustrator who enhanced every book he ever worked on.

In the middle of the big publishing houses and the endless stream of Shades of Grey and Da Vinci Code type drivel, these books from Slightly Foxed are like perfect gems.  If you love Rosemary Sutcliff and remember her from your childhood, as I do, then you know that when I say every word she writes is perfectly chosen and just right for the sentence in which it is embedded, I am speaking true.  You may have battered and loved old copies of these books on your shelf. Well, treat yourself and head over to the website and order these.  Give yourself a present.  You won't regret it.