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Rosemary Sutcliff was born in 1920 in West Clanden, Surrey. With over 50 books to her credit, Rosemary Sutcliff is now universally considered one of the finest writers of historical novels for children. Her first novel, The Queen Elizabeth Story was published in 1950. In 1959 her book The Lantern Bearers won the Carnegie Medal. In 1974 she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and in 1978 her book, Song for a Dark Queen was commended for the Other Award. In 1975, Rosemary was awarded the OBE for services to Children's Literature and the CBE in 1992. Unfortunately Rosemary passed away in July 1992 and is much missed by her many fans.
In an effort to imagine the origin of the ancient White Horse of Uffington, cut into a hillside with what she feels to be a magical power, Sutcliff invents Lubrin Dhu, a chief's third son, who is somehow possessed of the true artistic impulse, a need to get into his impermanent drawings the feel and the flight of the birds - or of the horses which are at the center of his people's economy. But invaders from the South, also horse people, conquer their hold, and for the sake of the few of his people who survive the siege, Lubrin makes a bargain with the new chief. He will create the horse on the hillside, and in return his people will be free to move on to other, dreamed-of horse runs further north. Sutcliff refers to Lubrin's work as picture-magic, and though she never suggests any particular beliefs associated with the activity, it is understood by all that Lubrin's own ritual death must be part of the contract. And so Lubrin creates a horse worth dying for, even though he knows that a lesser work would satisfy the one who ordered it. Though Sutcliff has given us more rounded recreations in the past, and here as elsewhere her plot sometimes seems too well made, her vision of an artist simultaneously - in fact, indissolubly - true to his art and to his people is impressively realized. (Kirkus Reviews)
