Last year I read a very long book called The Civil War, in an attempt to understand that period of British history. What I did understand by the end is why it is not a period covered often on the school curriculum. It is messy and complicated and hard to parcel into neat conclusions.
After I finished it, I remembered that as a child I had enjoyed a book about Cavaliers by Rosemary Sutcliff. I still had my copy of the book so I dug it out and discovered it is in fact about Sir Thomas Fairfax who took Cromwell's side. More particularly it is about his wife Anne.
The book is The Rider of the White Horse, and I was delighted to find it entirely entrancing on a second reading. Sutcliff writes vivid and beautiful descriptions and creates living characters the reader is engaged by. I was struck by the fact that two fairly major characters are disabled but that there is nothing at all propagandistic in Sutcliff's portrayal of them. I then discovered that she herself was disabled and in a way that made it all the more admirable that she hadn't felt the need to crudely hammer home any messages about the disabled person's plight.
Sutcliff is far too good a writer for that. Her story is moving and exciting, her evocation of landscape and of interiors is marvellous and, although the book was published as part of the Peacock series, and thus intended for younger readers, she never writes down or patronises her readers in any way. I really enjoyed it and missed it when I came to the end.
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