On Memory

 I mentioned previously that amongst the boxes I uncovered in the attic, I found some letters home from prep school. One of the things I mentioned has been troubling me somewhat: offhandedly I refer to Rosemary Sutcliff. In particular, I write to my parents, in amongst other bits of schoolboy news, "I am going to see Rosemary Sutcliff tomorrow."

Rosemary Sutcliff was a great favourite writer of mine as a child: I loved The Eagle of the Ninth, and was given The Lantern Bearers as a prize. And yet - I have absolutely no memory of going to see Rosemary Sutcliff give a talk, at all. I would have been 10 at the time. I do remember seeing a writer called June Counsel, when I was very young, and her lovely book A Dragon in Summer; I also have vague memories of Val Biro, who was a Sussex resident, coming to visit my day school, and I still have copies of books from both writers with their signatures inside.

I would have thought that seeing Rosemary Sutcliff in person would have been burned onto my memory. What's stranger is that I also have no memory of being disappointed that I couldn't  see her, perhaps through illness, or the event being cancelled. She died in 1992, not long after the date of my letter: perhaps the event was cancelled through illness, or simply old age.

There's no way, of course, of checking, bar visiting the school and searching their archives (if they have any), unless someone else who happened to be at school with me at the time remembers. It remains a mystery, and probably will remain so. In the meantime, it has encouraged me to go back to the books.

UPDATE:

I am reliably informed that we did go to visit Rosemary Sutcliff, at Rosemead Preparatory school (where I'd gone before Dorset House). And now I remember going there, and seeing some of my old friends in the queue; but I still don't really have any memory of the actual talk itself. Strange, isn't it?