The Lantern Bearers (Sutcliff novel)
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- This article is about the book by Rosemary Sutcliff. For other books and uses of the term, see The Lantern Bearers.
The Lantern Bearers is a historical adventure novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1959, with illustrations by Charles Keeping. Set in Roman Britain in the 400s, it is the story of a British Roman's life after the final withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain.
Although part of a series of loosely-connected books—it follows The Eagle of the Ninth and The Silver Branch and precedes Sword at Sunset—the themes in The Lantern Bearers are more complex than in the prior books. Issues of loss, estrangement, and loyalty are more complicated, pulling main characters in conflicting directions. Reviewers tend to regard it as appropriate for a slightly older readership than its predecessors.
The title comes from a remark made by one of the characters, "We are the lantern bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward against the darkness and the wind". The effort to maintain what the protagonists see as the light of civilisation against Saxon barbarians is central to the plot of the book.
The Lantern Bearers won the Carnegie Medal for literature.
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