Very occasionally, the opening sentence of a book works a small miracle on the reader. It is as if a shutter sprang open momentarily, to reveal the essence and truth of the entire book within a single visionary second. There is nothing obviously spectacular about the first sentence of The Sword and the Circle but the magic is there and with it the certainty that riches lie ahead.

Many followers of Rosemary Sutcliff must have waited and hoped for her to bring her own particular distinction to a retelling of the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. There are other available versions, of course, some of them admirable …, but The Sword and the Circle stands far above any collection known to me, and should be seized on by anybody providing books for children upwards of ten years old.

With her usual scrupulous regard...