‘The house where they all lived was in a narrow street so close to the river that they could smell the mud when the tide was out, and so close to Black Friars’ Monastery that they could hear the chapel bell ringing to prayers all through the day.’
The Armourer’s House was first published in 1951 and this new edition of the classic children’s book by Rosemary Sutcliff has now been published by Manderley Press, with an introduction by Lara Maiklem and a specially commissioned front cover and illustrations by Isabel Greenberg.
Rosemary Sutcliff wrote books for those aged 9 to 90, and is perhaps most well-known for her meticulously researched historical novels for children, offering generations of readers a ‘magic carpet into the past’.
In this book, Tamsyn, nearly nine, leaves her sleepy Devon town by the sea for a new life in sixteenth-century London. She arrives at her uncle’s home on the River Thames, and is immediately enchanted by the brightly painted carved blue dolphins that adorn it. The ships and river traffic passing Dolphin House – including the royal barge carrying King Henry VIII and his new Queen Anne Boleyn – feed Tamsyn’s imagination and her dreams of going to sea for a life of voyage and discovery. But as she soon finds out, adventure and excitement can also be found closer to home in Tudor London.
‘History can be brought to life through the tiniest of objects and the smallest of details, and Rosemary Sutcliff was an expert in this.’ Lara Maiklem, author of the Sunday Times best-seller Mudlarking
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