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Sun Horse, Moon Horse
Sun Horse, Moon Horse is the story of Lubrin Dhu, third son of the Chieftain of the Iceni - the Early Iron Age horse people, who live by their skill in breeding and driving their great horse herds on the high chalk downs.As a child, Lubrin sees the patterns of a private magic in his mind's eye - in the vision of a galloping white mare leading her herd over the crest of a hill. This picture-magic he returns to again and again as he grows up, to the puzzlement and ridicule of his fellows. In the end it is his gift that releases his tribe from their own conquerors and gives them the freedom to start their clan life anew.In this interpretation of how the White Horse of Uffington, in Berkdhire, might have been made, Rosemary Sutcliff has created a story of great sensitivity and understanding.
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First published January 1, 1977
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About the author
Rosemary Sutcliff
107 books681 followersRosemary Sutcliff, CBE (1920-1992) was a British novelist, best known as a writer of highly acclaimed historical fiction. Although primarily a children's author, the quality and depth of her writing also appeals to adults. She once commented that she wrote "for children of all ages, from nine to ninety."
Born in West Clandon, Surrey, Sutcliff spent her early youth in Malta and other naval bases where her father was stationed as a naval officer. She contracted Still's Disease when she was very young and was confined to a wheelchair for most of her life. Due to her chronic sickness, she spent the majority of her time with her mother, a tireless storyteller, from whom she learned many of the Celtic and Saxon legends that she would later expand into works of historical fiction. Her early schooling being continually interrupted by moving house and her disabling condition, Sutcliff didn't learn to read until she was nine, and left school at fourteen to enter the Bideford Art School, which she attended for three years, graduating from the General Art Course. She then worked as a painter of miniatures.
Rosemary Sutcliff began her career as a writer in 1950 with The Chronicles of Robin Hood. She found her voice when she wrote The Eagle of the Ninth in 1954. In 1959, she won the Carnegie Medal for The Lantern Bearers and was runner-up in 1972 with Tristan and Iseult. In 1974 she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Her The Mark of the Horse Lord won the first Phoenix Award in 1985.
Sutcliff lived for many years in Walberton near Arundel, Sussex. In 1975 she was appointed OBE for services to Children's Literature and promoted to CBE in 1992. She wrote incessantly throughout her life, and was still writing on the morning of her death. She never married.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/rosema...
Born in West Clandon, Surrey, Sutcliff spent her early youth in Malta and other naval bases where her father was stationed as a naval officer. She contracted Still's Disease when she was very young and was confined to a wheelchair for most of her life. Due to her chronic sickness, she spent the majority of her time with her mother, a tireless storyteller, from whom she learned many of the Celtic and Saxon legends that she would later expand into works of historical fiction. Her early schooling being continually interrupted by moving house and her disabling condition, Sutcliff didn't learn to read until she was nine, and left school at fourteen to enter the Bideford Art School, which she attended for three years, graduating from the General Art Course. She then worked as a painter of miniatures.
Rosemary Sutcliff began her career as a writer in 1950 with The Chronicles of Robin Hood. She found her voice when she wrote The Eagle of the Ninth in 1954. In 1959, she won the Carnegie Medal for The Lantern Bearers and was runner-up in 1972 with Tristan and Iseult. In 1974 she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Her The Mark of the Horse Lord won the first Phoenix Award in 1985.
Sutcliff lived for many years in Walberton near Arundel, Sussex. In 1975 she was appointed OBE for services to Children's Literature and promoted to CBE in 1992. She wrote incessantly throughout her life, and was still writing on the morning of her death. She never married.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/rosema...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
July 28, 2013
A beautifully heart-wrenching story, as only Rosemary Sutcliff can write them. It's one of those books that is very hard to put into words, because it almost feels like if you do, you'll lose something in your heart about the story. In any case, I was easily able to sympathize with Lubrin, and how no one saw the world as he did--I know how he felt almost too well. There was just something so painfully beautiful about that and his story, that, while it was definitely sad, it was also something much more. I will certainly never be able to think of the Uffington Horse again in the same way. As usual, just a really lovely story and also a beautiful tragedy. There's no one who can pull my heartstrings like Rosemary Sutcliff.
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July 28, 2025But but…the end! Was it one thing or the other?! 😂 Help!
What an odd but moving little novella! It has Sutcliff’s beautiful writing and compelling storytelling. She also captures through her main character Lubrin Dhu what it means to be an artist. That makes this book so worth the read! Lubrin’s whole struggle to create the White Horse is made even more intense by the biblical feel of that section. Lubrin becomes something of a Moses to his captured people. In that, there’s a real weight to the story. This would make a great book club read—it feels like a simple story until one suddenly realizes its complexity. I loved the David and Jonathan relationship between Lubrin and Dara too. The setting—Bronze age Britain—is so strange to me. I’m used to a Britain of the recognizable landmarks that humans have created. That felt a bit unsettling as I read. I’m glad to expand my imagination there though.
What an odd but moving little novella! It has Sutcliff’s beautiful writing and compelling storytelling. She also captures through her main character Lubrin Dhu what it means to be an artist. That makes this book so worth the read! Lubrin’s whole struggle to create the White Horse is made even more intense by the biblical feel of that section. Lubrin becomes something of a Moses to his captured people. In that, there’s a real weight to the story. This would make a great book club read—it feels like a simple story until one suddenly realizes its complexity. I loved the David and Jonathan relationship between Lubrin and Dara too. The setting—Bronze age Britain—is so strange to me. I’m used to a Britain of the recognizable landmarks that humans have created. That felt a bit unsettling as I read. I’m glad to expand my imagination there though.
January 28, 2024
I read this 28 years ago, but unlike other Sutcliff it didn't leave clear memories--possible because I found it so disturbing that I never reread it. It may have been one of the first books I read that broke the covenant of protagonist immortality. I read Deep WizardryDeep Wizardry shortly afterwards, and I think reading this might have been part of why I found that such an immersive experience--Deep Wizardry works best if you believe Nita can die.
A very short Sutcliff, but a powerful one.
A very short Sutcliff, but a powerful one.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 2, 2013
PICTURE MAGIC IN CHALK AND BLOOD
How much of himself must an artist put into his work, to validate it and give it his blessing, a life of its own? Warrior-youth Lubrien Dhu is the third son of the Chieftain in prehistoric Britain. Dark of skin and features in this nordic-looking clan, he feels stirrings in his mind to represent the natural world around him in two-dimensional form, but few admire dainty fingers or artistic insight in the Bronze Age.
We watch the dark one grow to young manhood, when his clan is viciously invaded from the south. We learn the special ideas and secret dreams, both of his own and shared with his best friend, Dara. Gradually the daring plan evolves--a dream of a great migration. His people, the Iceni, count their wealth by herds of horses; a matriarch system is in place. We witness curious customs and "barbaric" rites in this prehistoric world. Who is to say that Sutcliff's fictionalized anthropology is not true. Things Could have happened even as she described them.
Inspired by an ancient chalk depiction of a galloping horse, this stark story gains momentum until the ultimate, grim denouement, which makes for a powerful tale of sacrifice and isolation, in order to complete the picture magic. Thousands of years ago an unknown artist presented his world with a wild, windswept white horse on the High Chalk-- a gift that has been preserved through the centuries, which still speaks to contemporary man. Who was this ancient master and why did he choose such a huge and chalky canvas, instead of a cave? What was its purpose: statement of ego, hunting omen, religious symbol?
We will never be able to answer those questions, so I'd like to think that the artist was Sutcliff's Lubrien Dhu. His pictorial sacrifice to save his people from the invaders earned him the respect of his sister, the Woman of the Clan, even though he was physically shunned. His dream/vision has been preserved for generations up to the present. This is a daring tale about honor, courage and human motivation. Are we moderns worthy descendants of such a man?
(August 23, 2011. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
How much of himself must an artist put into his work, to validate it and give it his blessing, a life of its own? Warrior-youth Lubrien Dhu is the third son of the Chieftain in prehistoric Britain. Dark of skin and features in this nordic-looking clan, he feels stirrings in his mind to represent the natural world around him in two-dimensional form, but few admire dainty fingers or artistic insight in the Bronze Age.
We watch the dark one grow to young manhood, when his clan is viciously invaded from the south. We learn the special ideas and secret dreams, both of his own and shared with his best friend, Dara. Gradually the daring plan evolves--a dream of a great migration. His people, the Iceni, count their wealth by herds of horses; a matriarch system is in place. We witness curious customs and "barbaric" rites in this prehistoric world. Who is to say that Sutcliff's fictionalized anthropology is not true. Things Could have happened even as she described them.
Inspired by an ancient chalk depiction of a galloping horse, this stark story gains momentum until the ultimate, grim denouement, which makes for a powerful tale of sacrifice and isolation, in order to complete the picture magic. Thousands of years ago an unknown artist presented his world with a wild, windswept white horse on the High Chalk-- a gift that has been preserved through the centuries, which still speaks to contemporary man. Who was this ancient master and why did he choose such a huge and chalky canvas, instead of a cave? What was its purpose: statement of ego, hunting omen, religious symbol?
We will never be able to answer those questions, so I'd like to think that the artist was Sutcliff's Lubrien Dhu. His pictorial sacrifice to save his people from the invaders earned him the respect of his sister, the Woman of the Clan, even though he was physically shunned. His dream/vision has been preserved for generations up to the present. This is a daring tale about honor, courage and human motivation. Are we moderns worthy descendants of such a man?
(August 23, 2011. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
April 15, 2017
This is, I think, one of Sutcliff's lesser-known books, but, if I think about it objectively, I would say that it is also among her best. In this rather short story, she offers a possible background to the making of the White Horse of Uffington. The book is typical Sutcliff, dark and harsh at times, with a few glimmers of hope here and there. It's filled with the theme of sacrifice - the idea of the sacrifice a ruler has to make for his people, that is present in one form or another in most of Sutcliff's works - but also with the more complex and modern notion that there can be no true work of art without some form of sacrifice on the artist's part. I liked the main character a lot and I think that, as a writer and painter herself, Sutcliff must have related to him more than to her other characters. Unlike Marcus or Alexios or Artos, who were mainly soldiers, Lubrin Dhu is an artist first and foremost. More than this, he is an artist in a world of warriors, just like the real maker of the White Horse of Uffington must have been. Sutcliff plays with these themes quite nicely. Despite its mostly dark tone, this was truly a pleasure to read.
February 18, 2018
When a story is set on the back doorstep of where you live, you read it. An origin story pertaining to the imagining and crafting of Uffington's White Horse, Lubrin Dhu, a black-haired, black-sheep of his family is called to its making. His eye for looking at the world in a way which is foreign to those he meets means that, for the first part of his life, he is separate.
Yet the tribe who live atop the hill are storytellers and horse traders. They understand, at least, that Lubrin's blood is touched by that of his father, the Chieftain and that perhaps his visions and patternings ,whilst sat at the top of a wych-elm, might portend a safe future to its people.
Although the story may not have the action of other Sutcliff texts, there is something lyrical and wise in this story. A lovely moment, for me, is Lubrin's thoughts at the end of the story:
'It is only a round patch of turf, after all,' said something within him, laughing gently at his own foolishness. But something else deeper within him, knew that it was strong magic, the touch-spot where earth and sky came together; and something else said, 'There is harebell growing on it. That is the most wonderful thing of all.'
Yet the tribe who live atop the hill are storytellers and horse traders. They understand, at least, that Lubrin's blood is touched by that of his father, the Chieftain and that perhaps his visions and patternings ,whilst sat at the top of a wych-elm, might portend a safe future to its people.
Although the story may not have the action of other Sutcliff texts, there is something lyrical and wise in this story. A lovely moment, for me, is Lubrin's thoughts at the end of the story:
'It is only a round patch of turf, after all,' said something within him, laughing gently at his own foolishness. But something else deeper within him, knew that it was strong magic, the touch-spot where earth and sky came together; and something else said, 'There is harebell growing on it. That is the most wonderful thing of all.'
February 2, 2020
An elegantly written tale, that I wish I had encountered as a child, though it loses none of its richness for reading it as an adult. I first encountered an excerpt from this novel well over a decade ago, and even that short passage stayed with me, but somehow it was only this week that I finally decided to seek it out.
Sutcliffe's story of how the Uffington White Horse came into being in Celtic Britain asks readers to ponder the complex relationship between life, landscape, and creativity. Her prose is simple but vivid, like the Uffington White Horse itself. I found it easy to immerse myself in this story, to lose myself for a few hours in a beautifully evoked time and place.
Sutcliffe's story of how the Uffington White Horse came into being in Celtic Britain asks readers to ponder the complex relationship between life, landscape, and creativity. Her prose is simple but vivid, like the Uffington White Horse itself. I found it easy to immerse myself in this story, to lose myself for a few hours in a beautifully evoked time and place.
October 12, 2011
This bittersweet novel was the first of Sutcliff's that I read and really appreciated, so it holds a special place in my heart. It is incredibly sad, as most of her books are, but spectacularly written all the same.
November 5, 2017
I first read this story when I was in primary school and I remember it leaving a big impression on me then. It still does. Sutcliffe is so good at making characters that are tragic but also proud. You really feel that it is a true story from a long time ago.
June 29, 2018
This was a surprisingly dark story for a middle-grade book. We follow Lubrin Dhu of the Iceni from his infancy, chasing swallows and trying to catch their swooping motions in "picture magic" to his adulthood and the moment he sees his clan, his people, moving from their ancestral land off to new lands in search of a new life, carving a sign for the ages into the chalk hillside of the land where he was born, a sign that they were there.
This is not a story for sensitive children, those who would be troubled by death and violence. But for those who are interested in the realities (if not whole truths, because who can ACTUALLY know if Lubrin Dhu existed, or what the purpose was behind the chalk carved White Horse of Uffington) of history, this is a great glimpse into what life might have been like for those living in Bronze and Iron Age Britain, 2000+ years ago.
This is not a story for sensitive children, those who would be troubled by death and violence. But for those who are interested in the realities (if not whole truths, because who can ACTUALLY know if Lubrin Dhu existed, or what the purpose was behind the chalk carved White Horse of Uffington) of history, this is a great glimpse into what life might have been like for those living in Bronze and Iron Age Britain, 2000+ years ago.
September 29, 2019
The White Horse at Uffington is surely one of the most recognisable images in English culture, its flowing lines and sense of onward movement an unmistakeable sign from another era. Sun Horse, Moon Horse is Rosemary Sutcliff's imagining of how it may have come into being and is an object lesson in taut, evocative storytelling. In just 100 pages she tells a story of war, conquest, friendship and sacrifice that is full of vigour and heart -wrenchingly sad. The Iron Age people she conjures up are at once so very different and so clearly the same as us in their emotional life. As ever, Sutcliif's ability to conjure up the feel of being in a landscape is very powerful; I can think of no other novelist that can so effectively anchor a story so firmly in a landscape.
June 22, 2024
For all its shortness this is not a children’s book, it is SAD. But it has a strange beauty to it that songs in minor keys do. Tragedy has a way of feeling like fate cannot be escaped, and there is a kind of symmetry in that, where a wheel keeps on turning the same way over and over, but we who have hope can see the the wheel the way those trapped within it could not. What I’m trying to say is it made me feel some type of way.
September 8, 2025
I’ve read various of Rosemary Sutcliff’s children’s historical novels in my time as a children’s librarian, and also ‘Sword at sunset’, which I’m very pleased to own a copy of,
as apparently it is quite hard to come by now. I really rate her as a writer, and as I��d never read this title, I ordered a second hand copy online. I have just read ‘Land of the White Horse’ by David Miles, a non-fiction archaeology/history title from the library, and the Sutcliff novel was mentioned in this.
Although this is published as a children’s book, it contains fairly graphic descriptions of Iron Age life, battles and sacrifices; Sutcliff doesn’t flinch from depicting the warrior lifestyle,but there is no gratuitous violence. There is a very sensitive portrayal of the protagonist, Lubrin Dhu, who as well as being a chief’s son and trained to be a warrior, is also possessed of a wonderful ability to draw. He can capture the movement and grace of the natural world around him, including the horses that form the central core of the life of the Iceni tribe to which he belongs. He becomes the creator of the White Horse of Uffington, (now in Oxfordshire, UK, but previously Berkshire,) an ancient hill carving that has miraculously survived thousands of years. In historical fact it predates the premise of this book; however this doesn’t detract from a wonderful novel that should awaken children’s imagination about the ancient history of our country. I was sad to see that my public library authority, North Yorkshire, has very few of Sutcliff’s books in stock now; I suppose she has fallen out of fashion. I’m going to give this copy to my niece, who lives near Uffington, so that her visiting grandchildren can read it.
as apparently it is quite hard to come by now. I really rate her as a writer, and as I��d never read this title, I ordered a second hand copy online. I have just read ‘Land of the White Horse’ by David Miles, a non-fiction archaeology/history title from the library, and the Sutcliff novel was mentioned in this.
Although this is published as a children’s book, it contains fairly graphic descriptions of Iron Age life, battles and sacrifices; Sutcliff doesn’t flinch from depicting the warrior lifestyle,but there is no gratuitous violence. There is a very sensitive portrayal of the protagonist, Lubrin Dhu, who as well as being a chief’s son and trained to be a warrior, is also possessed of a wonderful ability to draw. He can capture the movement and grace of the natural world around him, including the horses that form the central core of the life of the Iceni tribe to which he belongs. He becomes the creator of the White Horse of Uffington, (now in Oxfordshire, UK, but previously Berkshire,) an ancient hill carving that has miraculously survived thousands of years. In historical fact it predates the premise of this book; however this doesn’t detract from a wonderful novel that should awaken children’s imagination about the ancient history of our country. I was sad to see that my public library authority, North Yorkshire, has very few of Sutcliff’s books in stock now; I suppose she has fallen out of fashion. I’m going to give this copy to my niece, who lives near Uffington, so that her visiting grandchildren can read it.
November 22, 2025
The more Rosemary Sutcliff I read the more I forsake my parents for not introducing me to her positively enchanting writing as a child. She is able to write historical MG/YA fiction in such a way that even though it’s incredibly well-researched and based largely in fact, it feels like an absolute fantasyland–making her books a great read for fans of any of the big names in historical or fantasy MG/YA fiction. This title skews a little older and follows the Iceni people as an imagined origin story of the Uffington White Horse, something I knew nothing about before diving into this book and am now convinced I need to get there STAT.
June 7, 2019
Astonishing, achngly beautiful novel about the creation of a now-ancient chalk horse as a young man of a conquered tribe finds a way to save his people. A book to stand with the very best of Ursula Le Guin and Alan Garner.
June 9, 2019
When I read this book, I did not know it was a fictionalized treatment of the story of Uffington's White Horse, which exists on a hillside in England. Its origins have been traced to the Iron Age and it is in this setting that the author weaves her tragic tale.
June 21, 2025
Beautifully written and very moving. It's amazing that Sutcliff was able to bring history to life so vividly, all the more impressive in just 126 pages. The characters and their surroundings leapt off the page.
March 6, 2018
Wonderful!
June 23, 2019
This didn't seem much like a children's book to me. I sniveled at the end of it.
January 6, 2020
my utmost favourite book from childhood
June 20, 2021
Really got to me as a kid this one
April 19, 2022
Pretty good, but it didn't really draw me or my kids in.
May 11, 2024
The language and cadence of the writing takes you back in time to tell the story of the ways and perils of the being a member of the iceni tribe. Fascinating.
October 2, 2024
An extraordinary tale of the making of the prehistoric White Horse at Uffington in Oxfordshire with an unforgettable ending. One of the bravest books in all children's literature.
May 20, 2025
Prehistoric indigenous English Culture
The Uffington White Horse
360 feet long horse made of Limestone
You can only see it from the sky, so why did prehistoric indigenous British people make it?
The Uffington White Horse
360 feet long horse made of Limestone
You can only see it from the sky, so why did prehistoric indigenous British people make it?
July 12, 2025
History, mythology, family
War, mysticism, hope
Art, beauty, sacrifice
War, mysticism, hope
Art, beauty, sacrifice
November 24, 2025
A quite beautiful imagining of how the white horse came to be with a real emotional core.
November 23, 2015
Rosemary Sutcliff presents a creation myth for the White Horse of Uffington, which was carved into the hillside chalk during the late Bronze or early Iron Age. Sutcliff's real gift is her ability to distill people belonging to remote and alien cultures down to their essential humanness, making them -- their lives, their emotions, and their dreams -- as accessible as those of any contemporary person. Like Shakespeare, Sutcliff also has the ability to lay bare someone's entire character with a single sentence. The simplicity of her writing provides a powerful poetic completely devoid of sentimentality.
Lubrin, in whom the blood of his distant ancestors the Old People runs true, is the third son of a Chieftain whose tribe is the proposed forerunner to the Iceni. Marked by dark hair and eyes and a slight build among a fair-haired and light-eyed stocky people, he is further made an outsider by his desire for artistic creation, which remains mostly inexpressible. His loneliness is temporarily soothed by his childhood friendship to Dara with whom he forms a bond closer than brothers and shares a dream to seeking new lands and founding a new clan. However, a trick of fate sunders him from Dara .
When another tribe displaced by Roman conquests conquers Lubrin's people, slaying his father, two brothers, and the majority of the menfolk, it falls to Lubrin and his strange gift to save what remains of his clan and bargain for them to be released from slavery and allowed to seek new lands for themselves in the north.
Lubrin, in whom the blood of his distant ancestors the Old People runs true, is the third son of a Chieftain whose tribe is the proposed forerunner to the Iceni. Marked by dark hair and eyes and a slight build among a fair-haired and light-eyed stocky people, he is further made an outsider by his desire for artistic creation, which remains mostly inexpressible. His loneliness is temporarily soothed by his childhood friendship to Dara with whom he forms a bond closer than brothers and shares a dream to seeking new lands and founding a new clan. However, a trick of fate sunders him from Dara .
When another tribe displaced by Roman conquests conquers Lubrin's people, slaying his father, two brothers, and the majority of the menfolk, it falls to Lubrin and his strange gift to save what remains of his clan and bargain for them to be released from slavery and allowed to seek new lands for themselves in the north.
October 5, 2013
I had mis-remembered this book. I knew I'd read it, and I knew I had thought it was good - but I had forgotten the inevitability of the ending. I started re-reading it, thinking there were bits of Warrior Scarlet there in the friendship between Lubrin and Dara - and about halfway through it grabbed around my heart and never let go, and I cried at the ending, which was exactly the right ending.
It's also good, in a time where films seem to show that violence is the only answer, and heroes have to be violent to win, to see a story where the hero saves his tribe by his art, and not by violence.
It's also good, in a time where films seem to show that violence is the only answer, and heroes have to be violent to win, to see a story where the hero saves his tribe by his art, and not by violence.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews