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.
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