Sword At Sunset

by Rosemary Sutcliff

Hodder & Stoughton, 1963, illustrated end-papers, hardcover, dustjacket

Near Fine Condition, price clipped end-paper, previous owners gift inscription to front flyleaf, tape residue to front flyleaf, back flyleaf and title page, minor shelf wear to dustjacket

'This modern interpretation of King Arthur shows "no knight in shining armour, no Round Table, no many-towered Camelot": instead, the solitary figure of one great man more real than legend.
IN this superb 20th century novel, Rosemary Sutcliff presents an Arthur shorn of his romantic trappings and seen again as the man he must have been - Artos the Bear, who built up his own band of free-lance heavy cavalry, British and Romano-British, struggling to guard their country from the invading Saxons; a bastard member of teh old British Royal House, descended from Maximus and a British princess; married to Guenhumara, daughter of a Caledonian chieftain.  Here is the story, sombre, powerful, triumphant, of the human being behind Arthur legends, a natural leader of men to whom, when the barbarian darkness came flooding in, the last guttering lights of civilisation seemed worth fighting for.'