Rosemary Sutcliff CBE (14 December 1920 - 23 July 1992) was a British novelist best known for children's books, especially historical fiction and retellings of myths and legends. Although she was primarily a children's author, the quality and depth of her writing also appeals to adults. In a 1986 interview she said, "I would claim that my books are for children of all ages, from nine to ninety." Sutcliff lived for many years in Walberton near Arundel, Sussex. In 1975, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to children's literature, and was promoted to be a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992. The Mark of the Horse Lord won the inaugural Phoenix Award in 1985, named by the Children's Literature Association the best English-language children's book that did not a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. She wrote incessantly throughout her life and was still writing on the morning of her death in 1992. Sutcliff never married and had no children.