The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff

Exciting and informative – and recently released as the movie The Eagle. The six-part television series The Eagle of the Ninth is a BBC adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular children's novel, first published in 1954. Forcibly retired from the Roman army because of a wound, young centurion Marcus Flavius Aquila goes in search of the Ninth Legion, led by his father, which disappeared many years before. Charlie Simpson reads it as if he believed every word.Ĭharlie Simpson gives an excellent reading of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Eagle of the Ninth. Sutcliff evokes a dark, threatening landscape full of lonely lochs and mist-shrouded mountains, where the mystic arts are more powerful than shield walls. Life beyond Hadrian’s wall and the protection of the red-crested legionaries is a dangerous place.

It follows the fate of the son of the Ninth Legion’s commander as he attempts to solve the mystery of the missing soldiers. Roman Britain: Marcus Flavius Aquila, a young centurion is forced into retirement after a wound in his first major engagement against a rebel British tribe. Sutcliff’s novel is classed as a junior classic, but it’s no less adult than and every bit as entertaining as Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series. While it remained aloft the legion’s honour lived. Eighteen hundred years later archaeologists at Silchester dug up a wingless Roman eagle, the military emblem carried by the standard-bearer of every Roman legion. Sometime around AD117, the Ninth Legion, stationed in Eboracum, now York, marched north to put down a Caledonian rising and was never heard of again. In his chapter ‘Pax Romana’, Lacey touches on the lasting legacy of the Romans in Britain which, along with Hadrian’s wall and underfloor heating, included cabbages, apples, roses and the domestic cat. Read by Charlie Simpson against a background of thrilling music, and sparkling with detail about the Romans in Britain, it is perfect for boys of eight and over.

Rosemary Sutcliffe’s gripping The Eagle of the Ninth, is about a young centurion’s search for a missing legion over Hadrian’s Wall.

Titles by Rosemary Sutcliff Titles by Rosemary Sutcliff The Eagle of the Ninth (abridged) Reviews

The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff