Keeping Charles - Beowulf: dragon slayer

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First published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head, 1961
This ebook updated 2016

Text copyright Anthony Lawton, 1961
Illustrations by Charles Keeping
Illustrations copyright The Bodley Head, 1961
Cover illustration copyright Tom Duxbury, 2016

The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

A CIP catalogue record for the print edition is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781446404614

All correspondence to:
RHCP Digital
Penguin Random House Childrens
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL

Rosemary Sutcliff is best known for her novel The Eagle of the Ninth, a historical novel about the Romans in Britain.

Rosemary suffered from juvenile arthritis, which led to many stays in hospital, and so she was educated at home by her mother who introduced her to Celtic and Saxon legends, as well as Icelandic sagas, fairy tales and the work of Rudyard Kipling.

In her lifetime, Rosemary wrote more than sixty childrens books, historical novels, stories, radio and TV scripts.

Charles Keeping was born in 1924 to a poor but close south-east London family. As a child he was encouraged to draw and write stories with his older sister, to keep them both off the streets and away from bad influences. He illustrated numerous books by Rosemary Sutcliff, classics for the Folio Society and many of his own titles. He won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1967 and 1981. He died in 1988.

Rosemary had always had a fascination for ancient myths and stories. Not long after the end of the war, Rosemary wrote a retelling of Celtic and Saxon legends that she showed to an old friend. He sent the manuscript to Oxford University Press (OUP), but unfortunately they rejected it. However, in 1950 OUP gave Rosemary her first commission to write a childrens version of the Robin Hood legends, and after that Rosemary went on to become an established writer of historical fiction for both adults and children.

A A small man with his hands on his knees, and his long-sighted seamans gaze coming and going about the smoky hall.

B The Man-Wolf, the Death-Shadow, who has his lair among the sea inlets and the coastal marshes.

C A young man, fair-headed and grey-eyed as most of his fellows were, but taller than they by half a head, and with strength that could outwrestle the great Northern bear showing in the quiet muscles of his neck and shoulders.

D The lines on his face were bitten deep as sword-cuts by years of grief, and the beard that jutted over the broad goldwork collar at his throat was grey as a badgers pelt.

E Her fangs sharp behind her snarling lips, and her eyes shone with balefire amid the tangle of her hair.

ANSWERS:

A) Hygelac

B) Grendel

C) Beowulf