Favourite Children's Authors: Peter Dickinson

Peter Dickinson: The Changes Trilogy (1975)

When Robert Lowell's groundbreaking collection Life Studies first came out in the UK in 1959, "the British reviews were fairly tepid." After listing the reservations of such luminaries as Al Alvarez, G. S. Fraser, Roy Fuller, Frank Kermode, and Philip Larkin, Lowell's biographer Ian Hamilton throws in as a parthian shot:

... and someone called Peter Dickinson in Punch announced that "few of the poems are in themselves memorable."

- Ian Hamilton, Robert Lowell: A Biography (1982): 269.

Nice going. They didn't call Hamilton "Mr. Nasty" for nothing. That "someone called Peter Dickinson" was, admittedly, not very well known for anything much at the time - besides being the literary editor of Punch, that is.

His first detective novels were still some years in the future, and it'd be another decade before he started publishing the children's books which would, eventually, make his name. But even so ... "Do you have to leave blood on the floor at the end of every meeting?" as an academic of my acquaintance once said to an up-and-coming careerist in the same field.

Fay Godwin: Peter Dickinson (1975)

I used to wonder why Dickinson used to claim, at the end of his "About the Author" blurbs:

His main interest, he says, "is writing verse. A lost art, in the way I do it. I feel like a man making wooden carriage wheels for the one customer who wants them."

A collection of these "verses", The Weir (2007), was eventually published by his four children as a birthday tribute a few years before his death. Here's a sample, from an advertisement for the book:

Self-published (thus not quite print-on-demand) it is attractively printed and is to be had from 1 Arlebury Park Mews, Alresford, Hants. S0 24 9ER – an address celebrated in the final Palinode:

Surely the quack must yearn just once to heal,
The falsest prophet hanker to reveal.
And should the poetaster* still refuse
To hope The Mews has welcomed in the Muse.

*untrue. Ed.

Hmmm. "More plaintive than constructive," I fear - to borrow a phrase from John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes - certainly not particularly instructive. The only other set of verses I've managed to locate online come from the "faq" section of Dickinson's own website:

Peter Dickinson

Frequently Asked Questions

Note

If you’re upon a School Assignment
You won’t be wanting this refinement.
Cheer up! There’s stuff about each book
Elsewhere, if you would care to look.


Do you put people you know into your books?

Where was she from, the woman in the tower?
I pushed a doorway on the winding stair,
Stole hesitantly in, and she was there,
An absolute presence, filling the room with power,
Her life a moment in my sleeping brain —
I know her, though we never meet again.

By contrast, those I see from day to day
I know by fits and snatches at the most,
A fluid jigsaw, many pieces lost.
What their real self is, who am I to say?
Though she’s the one with whom I share my life,
Can I be truly said to know my wife?


Have you any advice for a young writer?

Perfection? There is no such stuff.
But good enough is not enough.


What is your favourite book?

What is your favourite kind of food? say I.
If you have one — just one — you’re worth a sigh.


How did you become a writer?

It isn’t something I became —
It is the only life I know.
If you could somehow dam the flow
I’d be a writer just the same.

The condor in your local zoo,
Caged, wing-clipped, fed — what is it for?
It is a creature made to soar,
A dot on the enormous blue.


Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

A money spider hanging in mid air.
Like a retinal fleck it dangles from the lamp
In the blank bathroom, neither here nor there.
You reach to take the thread. Your fingers clamp

On nothing — nothing to feel or see — and yet
The thread is there, because the spider heaves
Beneath your hand. You take and loose it at
The sill, to live what life a spider lives.

A symbol surely, or a metaphor
At least. The groping mind grasps nothing. Still,
Some line of thought must have existed, for
This fleck now dangles here, this page its sill.

This I rather like, I must confess. It's not especially polished, but definitely good-humoured and interesting. I can see that it's not quite what editors were expecting in the age of Lowell and Plath, though. It sounds more like John Masefield, or one of the Georgians.

Peter Dickinson

In any case, whatever you think of him as a poet - or, for that matter, a judge of poetry - here's the rest of that bio-note, from the back of one of my old Puffin Books:

Peter Dickinson was born in Livingstone, Zambia, and was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. He spent his early childhood in Northern Rhodesia and South Africa, though his roots are in Gloucestershire. He comes from a political family with a long radical tradition, and, in fact, 1960 was the first Parliament since the Reform Bill in which he had no relation.
While doing research at Cambridge, Peter Dickinson was offered a job at Punch, and he became literary editor - he remained there until he decided to live entirely by his writing. He started writing detective novels in his spare time, and it was while he was stuck on one of these that he started to write children's books. His first children's book, The Weathermonger, was published in 1968. It is very unusual in that he dreamed the first chapter in its entirety and wrote it down. Since then he has written several more detective stories and children's books. He is the only crime writer to have been awarded the Golden Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association in two successive years.

- "About the Author." Peter Dickinson, The Blue Hawk (1976): 237.

And here's a more up-to-date account of him, written some forty years later, from Ethan Iverson's obituary, "An Unusual Blend of Poetry and Fantasy":

Peter Dickinson was born in Africa, but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of the British satirical magazine, Punch, and since then has earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for adults and children.
Amongst many other awards, Peter Dickinson has been nine times short-listed for the prestigious British Carnegie medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice. He has won the Phoenix Award twice for The Seventh Raven and Eva. He won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Chance, Luck and Destiny. Eva and A Bone from A Dry Sea were ALA Notable Books and SLJ Best Books of the Year. The Ropemaker was awarded the Mythopoeic Award for Children's Literature and was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. Peter's books for children have also been published in many languages throughout the world. His latest collection of short stories, Earth and Air, was published in October and his latest novel, In the Palace of the Khans was published in November.
Peter Dickinson was the first author to win the British Crime-Writers Golden Dagger for two books running: Skin Deep (1968), and A Pride of Heroes (1969). He has written twenty-one crime and mystery novels, which have been published in several languages.
He has been chairman of the UK Society of Authors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded an O.B.E. for services to literature in 2009.

Website: www.peterdickinson.com

The Carnegie Medal

Dickinson was quite a one for prizes, really. They say above that he was "nine times short-listed for the prestigious British Carnegie medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice."

What's more, he won it sequentially: for Tulku (1979) and City of Gold and Other Stories from the Old Testament (1980). He was also highly commended for Eva (1988), and commended for:

1. The Devil's Children (1970)
2. The Dancing Bear (1972)
3. The Blue Hawk (1976)
4. A Bone from a Dry Sea (1992)

The other two occasions he was on the short-list do not appear to have resulted in any commendations or awards. Nor are they included in the wikipedia page on the topic.

You'll note from the listings below that I own copies of - and have read - most of his 24 children's novels (not counting picture books, short stories, or edited collections). If I had to note a single dominant characteristic among them, it would be variety of theme and subject matter.

Peter Dickinson: The Flight of Dragons (1979)

There was never any guessing where Dickinson would go next. He started off with a strong bent towards fantasy, in such books as The Gift (1973), and (of course) the Changes trilogy (1968-70). This could be said to have culminated in his mock-serious biology textbook The Flight of Dragons (1979), which inspired the 1982 animated film of the same name.

Peter Dickinson: AK (1990)

He was also very interested in politics and activism: Annerton Pit (1977), AK (1990), and Shadow of a Hero (1993) and are all examples of that.

Peter Dickinson: A Bone from a Dry Sea (1990)

Then there was his fascination with prehistory and early man: A Bone from a Dry Sea (1992) and The Kin (1998) both dealt with that.

Peter Dickinson: Tulku (1979)

What else? Tibetan Buddhism in Tulku (1979); Lewis Carroll-like inventiveness in A Box of Nothing (1985); dystopian SF in Eva (1988); even a kind of epic fantasy in The Ropemaker (2001) and its sequel Angel Isle (2006) ...

Peter Dickinson: The Ropemaker (2001)

Perhaps that was his figure in the carpet, in fact: an impatience with creative straitjacketing and the commercial imperative to repeat the same kind of success over and over again.

What is your favourite kind of food? say I.
If you have one — just one — you’re worth a sigh.

Could that have accounted for his lukewarm response to Life Studies, way back in 1959? As Elizabeth Bishop said of her friend Robert Lowell's sense of "assurance" (by which I suspect she may actually have meant entitlement):

I feel I could write in as much detail about my uncle Artie, say, - but what would be the significance? Nothing at all. He became a drunkard, fought with his wife, and spent most of his time fishing ... and was ignorant as sin. It is sad; slightly more interesting than having an uncle practising law in Schenectady maybe, but that's about all. Whereas all you have to do is put down the names. And the fact that it seems significant, illustrative, American etc. gives you, I think, the confidence you display ...

EB to RL (December 14, 1957)

Dickinson, too, came from a reasonably eminent background: "He comes from a political family with a long radical tradition, and, in fact, 1960 was the first Parliament since the Reform Bill in which he had no relation", as he comments in the first of the bio-notes quoted above. But it's not, I think, something he ever plumed himself upon.

Nevertheless, that underlying radicalism does seem to have come through in his choice of touchy and difficult subjects - unusual in the kinds of children's books I (for one) was reading at the time: eco-terrorism in Annerton Pit, child mercenaries in AK, the perils of AI in Eva. One could call that being ahead of his time, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was of his time in a way the conservative, rural English children's writing of the time simply wasn't.

Does this in itself make him worthy of our attention? Certainly - in terms of literary history. However, I suspect that this particular aspect of his books may fade away over the years, leaving behind only their solid storytelling credentials. The Changes trilogy still seems very relevant to me, more than half a century after its first appearance. I know. I reread it quite recently.

Peter Dickinson: The Weathermonger / Heartease / The Devil's Children (1968-70)

I guess what interests me particularly about these three books is the way in which we can see Dickinson evolving and discovering new aspects of himself as a writer as the series continues. The first one, The Weathermonger, is full of fantasy and magic. It draws on an almost T. H. White-like vision of the Arthurian legend to explain the death of the everyday technology we've become so used to that it's hard to imagine life without it.

In the second book, Heartsease, Dickinson begins to flex his novelist's muscles a little more. The characters are far more interesting and complex, and the moral dilemmas more human-sized and realistic. The "change" from a technical to an agrarian society is now so ingrained in this Britain that it's hard for the characters to see any alternative.

The third book, The Devil's Children, is the one where we really see the mature Dickinson arrive. The travelling community of Sikhs twelve-year-old English girl Nicola finds herself adopted by have their own traditions, but they've also been forced to make adjustments to the dominant culture around them. She, in her turn, is forced to accommodate herself to this, much against her will. You could, if you wished to, see it as a little fable about multiculturalism disguised as an adventure story, but that would be simplistic. These are real, living characters, and the world they move through is as terrifyingly vivid as any dystopic landscape before or since.

The books move in backwards chronological order. Nicola in The Devil's Children is at the beginning of a set of cultural changes which will subsequently involve Margaret in Heartsease and which will be brought to an end by Sally in The Weathermonger. Unusually for male writers at the time, adolescent girls appear to have been Dickinson's protagonists of choice at this early point in his career, but (like most generalisations about him) that would not hold steady for long.

Peter Dickinson: A Box of Nothing (1985)

Not all of his complex and varied oeuvre is as good as this first, intensely gripping trilogy, but there are few really negligible titles there. One I read for the first time last year was the bizarrely inventive A Box of Nothing.

It seems to me every bit as good as Norton Juster's Phantom Tollbooth - possibly even on a par with visionary British writers such as David Lindsay or Mervyn Peake. It's not really characteristic of the rest of his work - but then, what is? Like any true gourmet, he didn't have one favourite food but many.

Peter Dickinson: Skin Deep / The Glass-sided Ants' Nest (1968)

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Jack Manning: Peter Dickinson (1986)

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson
(1927-2015)

Children's Novels:


1. The Changes Trilogy
   • The Changes Trilogy: The Devil's Children; Heartsease; The Weathermonger. 1970, 1969 & 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
   1. The Weathermonger (1968)
      • The Weathermonger. 1968. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
   2. Heartsease (1969)
      • Heartsease. 1969. Illustrated by Robert Hales. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
   3. The Devil's Children (1970)
      • The Devil's Children. 1970. Illustrated by Robert Hales. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.
2. Emma Tupper's Diary (1970)
   • Emma Tupper's Diary. 1971. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
3. [with Lois Lamplugh] Mandog (1972)
4. The Dancing Bear (1972)
   • The Dancing Bear. Illustrated by David Smee. 1972. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
5. The Gift (1973)
   • The Gift. Illustrated by Gareth Floyd London: Victor Gollancz, 1973.
6. The Blue Hawk (1976)
   • The Blue Hawk. Illustrated by David Smee. 1976. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
7. Annerton Pit (1977)
   • Annerton Pit. 1977. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.
8. Tulku (1979)
   • Tulku. 1979. A Puffin Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988.
9. The Seventh Raven (1981)
   • The Seventh Raven. 1981. A Puffin Plus. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.
10. Healer (1983)
    • Healer. 1983. A Puffin Plus. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
11. A Box of Nothing (1985)
    • A Box of Nothing. Illustrated by Ian Newsham. 1985. A Magnet Book. London: Methuen, 1987.
12. Eva (1988)
    • Eva. 1988. London: Corgi Freeway, 1992.
13. AK (1990)
    • AK. 1990. London: Corgi Freeway, 1992.
14. A Bone from a Dry Sea (1992)
    • A Bone from a Dry Sea. 1992. London: Corgi Freeway, 1994.
15. Shadow of a Hero (1993)
    • Shadow of a Hero. 1994. London: Corgi Freeway, 1996.
16. Time and the Clock Mice, Etcetera (1993)
17. The Kin (1998)
    1. Suth's Story
    2. Noli's Story
    3. Ko's Story
    4. Mana's Story
    • The Kin. Illustrated by Ian Andrew. 1998. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2001.
18. The Ropemaker (2001)
    • The Ropemaker. Illustrated by Ian Andrew. 2001. Macmillan Children’s Books. London: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2002.
19. The Tears of the Salamander (2003)
20. The Gift Boat [aka 'Inside Granddad'] (2004)
21. Angel Isle [The Ropemaker, 2] (2006)
    • Angel Isle. Illustrated by Ian Andrew. 2006. Macmillan Children’s Books. London: Macmillan Publishers Limited, 2007.
22. In the Palace of the Khans (2012)

Mystery Novels:

James Pibble series:

Skin Deep [aka 'The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest'] (1968)

A Pride of Heroes [aka 'The Old English Peep-Show'] (1969)

The Seals [aka 'The Sinful Stones'] (1970)

Sleep and His Brother (1971)

The Lizard in the Cup (1972)

One Foot in the Grave (1979)

23. The Green Gene (1973)
24. The Poison Oracle (1974)
25. The Lively Dead (1975)
26. King and Joker (1976)
27. Walking Dead (1977)
28. A Summer in the Twenties (1981)
29. The Last Houseparty (1982)
30. Hindsight (1983)
31. Death of a Unicorn (1984)
32. Tefuga (1985)
33. Skeleton-in-Waiting (1987)
34. Perfect Gallows (1988)
35. Play Dead (1991)
36. The Yellow Room Conspiracy (1992)
37. Some Deaths Before Dying (1999)

Picture Books:


38. The Iron Lion. Illustrated by Marc Brown & Pauline Baynes (1973)
39. Hepzibah. Illustrated by Sue Porter (1978)
40. Giant Cold. Illustrated by Alan Cober (1984)
41. Mole Hole (1987)
42. Chuck and Danielle (1996)

Short Stories:


43. City of Gold and Other Stories from the Old Testament. Illustrated by Michael Foreman (1980)
44. Merlin Dreams (1988)
45. The Lion Tamer's Daughter and Other Stories [aka 'Touch and Go'] (1997)
46. [with Robin McKinley]. Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits (2002)
    • [with Robin McKinley]. Elementals: Water. 2002. London: Corgi Books, 2003.
47. [with Robin McKinley]. Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits (2009)
48. Earth and Air: Tales of Elemental Creatures (2012)

Non-fiction:


49. Chance, Luck and Destiny (1975)
50. The Flight of Dragons. Illustrated by Wayne Anderson (1979)

Poetry:


51. The Weir: Poems by Peter Dickinson (2007)
52. A Closer Look At Me: A Collection of Poems Which Cover Everything from Love & Life to Serial Killers (2019)

Edited:


53. Hundreds and Hundreds (1983)
    • Hundreds and Hundreds. 1983. A Puffin Original. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.

Peter Dickinson, ed.: Hundreds and Hundreds (1984)

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Favourite Children's Authors: Rosemary Sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff: The Eagle of the Ninth (1954)

I wonder how kids nowadays would respond to a book like this? It's exerted a strange fascination over me ever since I first read it in our little school library when I was about 10 or 11 - not so much the details of Roman Army life as the curious atmosphere of the land beyond the frontier: the tribal territories past Hadrian's wall which Marcus Flavius Aquila is forced to negotiate in order to recover the Eagle emblem of his father's legion, the lost Ninth.

In particular, I was impressed by the decision of the sole survivor of the massacred army to stay where he was: "There is no way back past the waters of Lethe." I didn't know (then) what the waters of Lethe were, or even how to pronounce the word, but I got the point. Like a white settler adopted by a Native American community, his incentive to rejoin "civilisation" seemed strangely lacking.

Kevin Macdonald, dir.: The Eagle (2011)

That was where the (fairly) recent movie fell short for me - there was too much emphasis on macho heroics, and Channing Tatum was not at all my image of the sensitive, cerebral Marcus of Sutcliff's book.

Michael Simpson & Baz Taylor, dir.: The Eagle of the Ninth (1977)

There is, apparently, an old British TV miniseries as well, but I've never seen it. It looks pretty clunky from the excerpts included on the imdb, but it would be rather amusing to see Patrick Malahide playing a Pictish tribesman at what must have been the very outset of his career ...

So popular was The Eagle of the Ninth when it first appeared, that Rosemary Sutcliff decided to use Marcus's family, the Aquilas, as the basis for a whole series of novels about the last days of Roman rule in England - and the growth of a new, Anglo-Saxon culture in its place. In each of these books reference is made at some point to an emerald seal ring with a dolphin embossed on it, which had been handed down in the family for generations.

Here (courtesy of Wikpedia) are all eight novels in order - not of publication, but of fictional chronological sequence:

Rosemary Sutcliff: Three Legions (1980)

The Eagle of the Ninth Series:

1. The Eagle of the Ninth (1954)
2. The Silver Branch (1957)
3. Frontier Wolf (1980)
4. The Lantern Bearers (1959)
5. Sword at Sunset (1963)
6. Dawn Wind (1961)
7. Sword Song (1997)
8. The Shield Ring (1956)

Sutcliff herself was clearly someone who had to surmount more than her fair share of challenges. Confined to a wheelchair from most of her adult life as a result of contracting Still's disease (or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis) as a child, she grew up in Malta and various other bases where her father, a Naval Officer, was stationed.

As a result she had a rather unconventional education, not even learning to read until she was 9 years old. She eventually left school at 14 to attend Art College. After graduating from there, she worked initially as a painter of miniatures. She published her first book, The Chronicles of Robin Hood, in 1950, at the age of 30. The Eagle of the Ninth, her sixth novel, came out in 1954.

Having been runner-up for the Carnegie Medal for the year's best children's book by a British writer on four previous occasions, she eventually won it in 1959 for The Lantern-Bearers.

Perhaps I'm prejudiced, but the books she wrote in the 1950s and early 1960s seem to me more powerful and lasting than much of her later work. That may simply be a matter of having read them at the right age, however. Certainly it was during that period that her own engagement with the Arthurian legend began.

Rosemary Sutcliff: Sword at Sunset (1963)

Arthurian novels:

1. The Lantern Bearers (1959)
2. Sword at Sunset (1963)
3. Tristan and Iseult (1971)
4. The Arthurian Trilogy:
   1. The Sword and the Circle (1981)
   2. The Light Beyond the Forest (1979)
   3. The Road to Camlann (1981)
5. The Shining Company (1990)

Her most powerful and enduring contribution to the subject, Sword at Sunset, begins - like Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave - with an epigraph: Francis Brett Young's poem "Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus

Arthur is gone . . . Tristram in Careol
Sleeps, with a broken sword - and Yseult sleeps
Beside him, where the Westering waters roll
Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps.

Lancelot is fallen . . . The ardent helms that shone
So knightly and the splintered lances rust
In the anonymous mould of Avalon:
Gawain and Gareth and Galahad - all are dust.

Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot
And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic
Lovers and their bright eyed ladies rot?
We cannot tell, for lost is Merlin's magic.

And Guinevere - Call her not back again
Lest she betray the loveliness time lent
A name that blends the rapture and the pain
Linked in the lonely nightingale's lament.

Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover
The bower of Astolat a smokey hut
Of mud and wattle - find the knightliest lover
A braggart, and his lilymaid a slut.

And all that coloured tale a tapestry
Woven by poets. As the spider's skeins
Are spun of its own substance, so have they
Embroidered empty legend - What remains?

This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak
That age had sapped and cankered at the root,
Resistant, from her topmost bough there broke
The miracle of one unwithering shoot.

Which was the spirit of Britain - that certain men
Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood
Loved freedom better than their lives; and when
The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood

And charged into the storm's black heart, with sword
Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed
With a strange majesty that the heathen horde
Remembered when all were overwhelmed;

And made of them a legend, to their chief,
Arthur, Ambrosius - no man knows his name -
Granting a gallantry beyond belief,
And to his knights imperishable fame.

They were so few . . . We know not in what manner
Or where they fell - whether they went
Riding into the dark under Christ's banner
Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent.

But this we know; that when the Saxon rout
Swept over them, the sun no longer shone
On Britain, and the last lights flickered out;
And men in darkness muttered: Arthur is gone . . .

It's interesting, in retrospect, to observe just how much this "End of Empire" theme resonated with Sutcliff, as with many other writers of the post-war generation. Imperial Rome was clearly, for them, almost interchangeable with Imperial Britain - and their intense nostalgia for the order and unquestioned assumptions of childhood creeps into all their accounts of "Saxon hordes" overwhelming the last few urbane flickers of Roman civilisation.

Sutcliff, however, was unusual in being able to see the other side of the equation as well. Her doomed Saxon warriors facing the oncoming Norsemen in The Shield Wall shows an evenhandedness of treatment, as well as a determination to back underdogs against aggressive invaders somewhat reminiscent of the revisionist historical novels of her near-contemporary Geoffrey Trease.

Sutcliff's later works on King Arthur largely content themselves with retelling Malory. But Sword at Sunset is still well worth reading. Her intimate knowledge of weariness and despair seems to have made her exceptionally good at depicting self-doubting, non-triumphant heroes.

That's what continues to ring true in her books, and makes her portrayal of the savage, tormented Cuchulain, the so-called "Hound of Ulster", so much more successful than her dutiful recital of The High Deeds of Finn MacCool.

Rosemary Sutcliff: The Hound of Ulster (1963)

When I think now about my first acquaintance with her books, I remember that I was almost afraid of them. She wasn't content with simple plots about everyday dilemmas: there was genuine violence and fear in almost all of them, as well as a lot more squalid (and smelly) local detail than was typical in children's historical novels of the time.

I can't help thinking that the hardships of her own life must have played against the sentimental romanticism implanted by her mother to create a strikingly realistic - and, for the time, very well researched - series of fantasies of the past. Books such as Warrior Scarlet or Outcast do not sugarcoat the subjects of violence and dispossession.

At times, as in Dawn Wind, she let her guard down and allowed a few rays of hope to steal in - her preference though, as in Francis Brett Young's poem, seems always to have been for the defiant last stand.

Anthony Lawton: Which book do readers think is Rosemary Sutcliff’s best? (2022)

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Rosemary Sutcliff (1984)

Rosemary Sutcliff
(1920-1992)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Children's Novels:


1. The Chronicles of Robin Hood. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1950)
2. The Queen Elizabeth Story. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1950)
3. The Armourer's House. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1951)
   • The Armourer's House. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1951. Oxford Children’s Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
4. Brother Dusty-Feet. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1952)
   • Brother Dustyfeet. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1952. Oxford Children’s Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.
5. Simon. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy (1953)
   • Simon. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy. 1953. Oxford Children’s Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1959.
6. The Eagle of the Ninth. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1954)
   • The Eagle of the Ninth. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1954. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.
   • Included in: Three Legions: The Eagle of the Ninth; The Silver Branch; The Lantern Bearers. 1954, 1957, 1959, 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
7. Outcast. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy (1955)
   • Outcast. 1955. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy. 1955. New Oxford Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1980.
8. The Shield Ring. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1956)
   • The Shield Ring. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1956. London: Oxford University Press, 1957.
9. The Silver Branch. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1957)
   • The Silver Branch. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1957. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.
   • Included in: Three Legions: The Eagle of the Ninth; The Silver Branch; The Lantern Bearers. 1954, 1957, 1959, 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
10. Warrior Scarlet. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1958)
    • Warrior Scarlet. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
    • Iincluded in: The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff: Warrior Scarlet; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958, 1963, 1960. London: Chancellor Press, 1987.
11. The Lantern Bearers (1959)
    • The Lantern Bearers. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1959. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.
    • Included in: Three Legions: The Eagle of the Ninth; The Silver Branch; The Lantern Bearers. 1954, 1957, 1959, 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
12. Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1960)
    • Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1960. Oxford Children’s Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
    • Iincluded in: The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff: Warrior Scarlet; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958, 1963, 1960. London: Chancellor Press, 1987.
13. Bridge Builders. Illustrated by Douglas Relf (1960)
14. Beowulf: Dragonslayer. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1961)
15. Dawn Wind. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1961)
    • Dawn Wind. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1961. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
16. The Hound of Ulster. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1963)
    • The Hound of Ulster. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus. London: The Bodley Head, 1963.
17. The Mark of the Horse Lord. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1965)
    • Iincluded in: The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff: Warrior Scarlet; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958, 1965, 1960. London: Chancellor Press, 1987.
18. The Chief's Daughter. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1967)
    • The Chief's Daughter. 1966. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus. 1967. Piccolo. London: Pan Books, 1978.
19. The High Deeds of Finn MacCool. Illustrated by Michael Charleton (1967)
    • The High Deeds of Finn MacCool. Illustrated by Michael Charlton. London: The Bodley Head, 1967.
20. A Circlet of Oak Leaves. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1968)
21. The Witch's Brat. Illustrated by Richard Lebenson (1970)
22. The Truce of the Games. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1971)
23. Tristan and Iseult (1971)
    • Tristan and Iseult. 1971. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
24. Heather, Oak, and Olive: Three Stories ["The Chief's Daughter", 1967; "A Circlet of Oak Leaves", 1968; "A Crown of Wild Olive", 1971]. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1972)
25. The Capricorn Bracelet: Six Stories. Illustrated by Charles Keeping & Richard Cuffari (1973)
26. The Changeling. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1974)
27. [with Margaret Lyford-Pike] We Lived in Drumfyvie (1975)
28. Blood Feud. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1976)
    • Blood Feud. 1976. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
29. Sun Horse, Moon Horse. Illustrated by Shirley Felts (1977)
    • Sun Horse, Moon Horse. 1977. Decorations by Shirley Felts. Knight Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982.
30. Shifting Sands. Illustrated by Laslzo Acs (1977)
31. Song for a Dark Queen (1978)
32. The Light Beyond the Forest. Illustrated by Shirley Felts (1979)
33. Three Legions [aka Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles (2010)] ["The Eagle of the Ninth", 1954; "The Silver Branch", 1957; "The Lantern Bearers", 1959] (1980)
    • Three Legions: The Eagle of the Ninth; The Silver Branch; The Lantern Bearers. 1954, 1957, 1959, 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
34. Frontier Wolf (1980)
    • Frontier Wolf. 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
35. Eagle's Egg. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1981)
36. The Sword and the Circle. Illustrated by Shirley Felts (1981)
37. The Road to Camlann. Illustrated by Shirley Felts (1981)
38. Bonnie Dundee (1983)
    • Bonnie Dundee. 1983. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
39. Flame-coloured Taffeta. Illustrated by Rachel Birkett (1986)
40. The Roundabout Horse. Illustrated by Alan Marks (1986)
41. A Little Dog Like You. Illustrated by Jane Johnson (1987)
42. The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff ["Warrior Scarlet", 1958; "The Mark of the Horse Lord", 1965; "Knight's Fee", 1960]. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1987)
    • The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff: Warrior Scarlet; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958, 1965, 1960. London: Chancellor Press, 1987.
43. The Shining Company (1990)
44. The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup. Illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark (1993)
45. Black Ships Before Troy. Illustrated by Alan Lee (1993)
46. Chess-Dream in a Garden. Illustrated by Ralph Thompson (1993)
47. The Wanderings of Odysseus. Illustrated by Alan Lee (1995)
48. Sword Song (1997)
    • Sword Song. 1997. Red Fox Classics. London: Random House Children’s books, 2001.
49. King Arthur Stories: Three Books in One [aka The King Arthur Trilogy (2007)] ["The Sword and the Circle", 1981; "The Light Beyond the Forest", 1979; "The Road to Camlann", 1981] (1999)

Novels for adults:


50. Lady in Waiting (1957)
51. The Rider of the White Horse (1959)
    • The Rider of the White Horse. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1959.
52. Sword at Sunset (1963)
    • Sword at Sunset. London: The Book Club, 1963.
53. The Flowers of Adonis (1969)
    • The Flowers of Adonis. 1969. London: Hodder Paperbacks, 1971.
54. Blood and Sand (1987)
    • Blood and Sand. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987.

Autobiography:


55. Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection (1983)
    • Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection. 1983. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Non-fiction:


56. Houses and History. Illustrated by William Stobbs (1960)
57. Rudyard Kipling (1960)
58. Heroes and History. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1965)
59. People of the Past: A Saxon Settler. Illustrated by John Lawrence (1965)

•

Rosemary Sutcliff: Blue Remembered Hills (1983)

•

Favourite Children's Authors: Mary Stewart

Mary Stewart: A Walk in Wolf Wood (1980)

It seems like an auspicious sign that I should have run across a first edition of Mary Stewart's A Walk in Wolf Wood in a vintage shop on New Year's Eve.

It's not my favourite among her children's books, but it's still a nice piece of timeslip fiction, with werewolves, and enchantments, and enchanted talismans, and all the usual appurtenances of her stories.

The American edition was actually subtitled "A Tale of Fantasy and Magic", in case potential buyers might be in doubt on the matter.

Mary Stewart: Ludo and the Star Horse (1974)

More to the point, I'd only seen it previously as a rather scruffy little paperback, whereas this hardback looks exceptionally handsome alongside my copies of her other two books in the genre, Ludo and the Star Horse and The Little Broomstick.

Mary Stewart: The Little Broomstick (1971)

The latter has recently been filmed - with a largely rewritten plot and somewhat sub-standard animation - as Mary and the Witch's Flower by Studio Ghibli. I'm normally a fan of their work, but in this case they didn't really succeed in catching the richly atmospheric simplicity of the original: a fantasy classic if ever there was one.

In particular, Endor College, Madam Mumblechook's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seems like a definite prototype for J. K. Rowling's Hogwarts. And there are many other seemingly throwaway details in Stewart's story, such as the strangely offkilter nursery rhymes recited within the walls of the college, which have stayed stuck in my head for all these years.

Hiromasa Yonebayashi, dir.: Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017)

The Little Broomstick is probably Stewart's best and most inventive children's book. And yet, despite that, I wouldn't call it my favourite among the three. Ludo and the Star Horse, her cleverly concocted guide to the signs of the Zodiac and other wonders of the night sky, is the one I never tire of.

Of course, as with most children's books, to get their full flavour you really have to have been there - to have read them when you were still a kid. The Little Broomstick was published when I was nine, and Ludo when I was twelve. I don't know when my parents first bought them, but probably on first publication, given the fact that both are first editions.

I certainly had no objections at that age to reading "girly" kid's books alongside the more boy's-own offerings of W. E. Johns, Arthur Catherall et al. My sister Anne was a fan of Mary Stewart's romance novels, which meant that I ended up reading all of those, too. Despite my initial misgivings, I found I really liked them - particularly the ones set in exotic locales such as Provence or the Greek Islands.

Mary Stewart: Romance Novels (2020)

It's alleged that Charles Darwin had two criteria for the novels he read as a respite from his labours: they had to have a happy ending, and the heroine must be good-looking. Much ink has been spilt on the rich irony of this juxtaposition: the prophet of biological determinism a closet sentimentalist in his off-hours!

There's something to be said for such comfortable generic expectations, though. Mary Stewart, the uncrowned "Queen of Romantic Suspense", understood exactly what her audience wanted: a frisson of fear, some dark shadows at the heart of the narrative, but no devastating surprises at the end. She was always more of an Ann Radcliffe than a Monk Lewis.

Mary Stewart: The House of Letterawe

And so it might have gone on indefinitely. She published a new book virtually every year between 1955 and 1968. Her publishers were happy; the fans were satisfied; she seemed to have found her ideal role both in literature and life, in her grand estate on Loch Awe in the Scottish Highlands.

Mary Stewart: The Crystal Cave (1970)

But then something happened: something unprecedented and completely off-topic. She wrote the autobiography of a Dark Ages boy with prophetic gifts, a boy called Merlin. She called it The Crystal Cave, after a strange little poem by Orkney writer Edwin Muir:

O Merlin in your crystal cave
Deep in the diamond of the day,
Will there ever be a singer
Whose music will smooth away
The furrow drawn by Adam's finger
Across the memory and the wave?
Or a runner who'll outrun
Man's long shadow driving on,
Break through the gate of memory
And hang the apple on the tree?
Will your magic ever show
The sleeping bride shut in her bower,
The day wreathed in its mound of snow
and Time locked in his tower?

Fans of her romance novels had no idea what to make of all this. She did write a few more in that vein, at widely scattered intervals, but from now on she was firmly in the grip of the Arthurian bug, which I've written more about here and here.

I called it "England's Dreaming" in the second of these posts, where I tried to link this fascination with the possible historicity of a figure called "King Arthur" with the wider subject of literary psychogeography.

However you try to account for it, though, this fascinating mania was at its height in the 1960s and 70s - presumably as part of the contemporary revival of New Age ideologies of nature worship and revived paganism.

Geoffrey Ashe, ed.: The Quest for Arthur's Britain (1971)

Geoffrey Ashe's Quest for Arthur's Britain was one of the Bibles of the new faith - even more than his slew of other books on the subject - principally because it seemed to promise concrete archaeological evidence for the existence of a charismatic warlord who flourished in the late 5th century, at much the same time as the romanticised "King Arthur."

A kind of orthodoxy grew up which took for granted that the resistance of the last Romano-Britains against the incoming Saxons had given rise not only to the idea but also a good deal of the detail of the exploits of this "Arthur" - whatever he looked like, and wherever he was based.

The intensity of Mary Stewart's imagination enabled her to flesh out this Romano-British world, still full of the relics of empire but gradually sliding into the chaotic world of tribal rivalries and local warlords.

Joan Grant: Winged Pharaoh (1937)

Her book was, accordingly, a massive success. It remains not only tremendously readable but also strangely persuasive in its vision of those long-lost times, poised between Classical antiquity and the oncoming heroic age. It was as if she'd had a vision, or an out-of-body experience, along the lines of the "reincarnation novels" of English parapsychologist Joan Grant.

The difference was that Mary Stewart could write.

Mary Stewart: The Hollow Hills (1973)

Am I the only one to have found the sequel a little disappointing? Merlin gradually retreats from centre stage to share the limelight with the boy Arthur who (I'm sorry to say) has little of the same incandescent star power.

There's less (I suppose inevitably) of the magic of a child's intense perceptions of the world, and more of the necessary politics involved in setting up a kingdom in Dark Age Britain.

It's still all very well written, mind you - and it's hard to imagine any normal reader actually stopping reading following Stewart's expertly woven story at the end of book one, but I'm afraid that it's The Crystal Cave which remains the masterpiece. The other books simply serve to flesh out the theme it proposes.

Mary Stewart: The Last Enchantment (1979)

Those of us who read these books when they first came out had a long weary wait before we could get out hands on The Last Enchantment. And it was bound to be a disappointment on some level, given this level of anticipation.

It's good enough. It completes the trilogy - Merlin's story is told to its end, though there are still some aspects of Arthur's left to fill in. Or so Stewart must have thought, anyway, as she went on to write a further instalment, devoted to the equally crucial figure of Mordred.

Mary Stewart: The Wicked Day (1983)

He is, of course, in many ways the most interesting character in the whole story: the Judas to Arthur's Christ. No-one's exactly cracked him yet, but there have been some pretty good attempts along the way.

Is this one of them? Up to each reader to decide, I guess. ...

Mary Stewart: The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)

And finally, last and definitely least, there's The Prince and the Pilgrim. Stewart was nearly 80 when she published this last addendum to her Arthurian world, and by then the kettle was no longer really on the boil.

The only reason I knew this book even existed was because I found a copy in a bach where I was staying one summer. Of course I promptly read it from cover to cover.

It's not really part of her main Arthurian sequence - nor is it simply a romance novel set in those historical times - but it has elements of both of those things. There's no real harm in it, but it's doubtful if there's much point in it either.

From anyone else, it would simply seem a straightforward potboiler, but I guess it's just the contrast with the wildly passionate writer of The Crystal Cave which makes it seem an unfortunate coda to her career as a visionary historical novelist.

Mary Stewart Omnibus: Rose Cottage / Stormy Petrel / Thornyhold (1999)

She published a few last novella-length fictions in her original romance vein, with occasional flashes of the old brilliance, but the heart of her work lies earlier: in those first fresh novels, intoxicated by the love of travel and romance in foreign parts; also in the magic of the three children's books.

Above all, it rests on the unforgettable intensity of The Crystal Cave.

Weird Tales: The Werewolf Howls (1941)

•

Mary Stewart

Lady Mary Florence Elinor Stewart [née Rainbow]
(1916-2014)

Novels:


1. Madam, Will You Talk? (1955)
   • Madam, Will You Talk? 1955. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1971.
2. Wildfire at Midnight (1956)
   • Wildfire at Midnight. 1956. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1974.
3. Thunder on the Right (1957)
   • Thunder on the Right. 1957. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1972.
4. Nine Coaches Waiting (1958)
   • Nine Coaches Waiting. 1958. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964.
   • The Castle of Danger [Young Adult version] (Longman simplified TESL Series, 1981)
5. My Brother Michael (1959)
   • My Brother Michael. 1959. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1973.
6. The Ivy Tree (1961)
   • The Ivy Tree. 1961. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1975.
7. The Moon-Spinners (1962)
   • The Moonspinners. 1962. Coronet Books. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1973.
8. This Rough Magic (1964)
   • This Rough Magic. 1964. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1966.
9. Airs Above the Ground (1965)
   • Airs Above the Ground. London: Readers Book Club, 1965.
10. The Gabriel Hounds (1967)
    • The Gabriel Hounds. 1967. London: Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., 1968.
11. The Wind Off the Small Isles (1968)
    • The Wind off the Small Isles. Illustrated by Laurence Irving. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968.
12. Touch Not the Cat (1976)
    • Touch Not the Cat. 1976. Coronet Books. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977.
13. Thornyhold (1988)
14. Stormy Petrel (1991)
    • Stormy Petrel. London: BCA, by arrangement with Hodder and Stoughton, 1991.
15. Rose Cottage (1997)

Series:


16. The Merlin Chronicles (1970-1995)
    1. The Crystal Cave (1970)
       • The Crystal Cave. 1970. Hodder Paperbacks. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971.
    2. The Hollow Hills (1973)
       • The Hollow Hills. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973.
    3. The Last Enchantment (1979)
       • The Last Enchantment. 1979. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980.
    4. The Wicked Day (1983)
       • The Wicked Day. 1983. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984.
    5. The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)
       • The Prince and the Pilgrim. 1995. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.

Children's novels:


17. The Little Broomstick (1971)
    • The Little Broomstick. Illustrated by Shirley Hughes. Leicester: Brockhampton Press Ltd., 1971.
18. Ludo and the Star Horse (1974)
    • Ludo and the Star Horse. Illustrated by Gino D’Achille. Leicester: Brockhampton Press Ltd., 1974.
19. A Walk in Wolf Wood (1980)
    • A Walk in Wolf Wood. Illustrated by Doreen Caldwell. Hodder and Stoughton Children's Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980.

Poetry:


20. Frost on the Window: And other Poems (1990)

•

Signs of the Zodiac

1. Aquarius: The Water-Bearer (January 20 – February 18)
   • Deity: GANYMEDE, cupbearer of the gods
2. Pisces: The Fish (February 19 - March 20)
   • Deity: APHRODITE & EROS, goddess of love & god of desire
3. Aries: The Ram (March 21 – April 19)
   • Deity: ARES, god of war
4. Taurus: The Bull (April 20 – May 20)
   • Deity: ZEUS, king of the gods
5. Gemini: The Twins (May 21 – June 20)
   • Deity: APOLLO & ARTEMIS, the divine siblings
6. Cancer: The Crab (June 21 – July 22)
   • Deity: HERA, queen of the gods
7. Leo: The Lion (July 23 – August 22)
   • Deity: ZEUS, king of the gods
8. Virgo: The Virgin (August 23 – September 22)
   • Deity: DEMETER, goddess of agriculture
9. Libra: The Scales (September 23 – October 22)
   • Deity: THEMIS, goddess of justice
10. Scorpio: The Scorpion (October 23 – November 21)
    • Deity: ARTEMIS, goddess of the hunt
11. Sagittarius: The Archer (November 22 – December 21)
    • Deity: APOLLO, the archer
12. Capricorn: The Sea-Goat (December 22 – January 19)
    • Deity: PAN, god of the wild

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