Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

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His life at Bottengoms and the landscape around his home became the subject of Blythe's long-running column, "Word from Wormingford", in the Church Times from 1993 to 2017. [3] [20] These meditative reflections on literature, history, the Church of England and the natural world were subsequently collected together in books including A Parish Year (1998) and A Year at Bottengoms Farm (2006). [21] A compilation of his work, Aftermath: Selected Writings 1960–2010, appeared in 2010. [22] Later life and death [ edit ] Blythe never married. He continued to live and work at Bottengoms Farm in Wormingford until his death, following the opinion expressed in The View in Winter that the elderly should remain in their own homes whenever possible. [23] He never learned to drive and did not use a computer. [9] Ronald Blythe, much-loved author celebrated for Akenfield, his classic book about village life in Suffolk – obituary". The Telegraph . Retrieved 15 January 2023.

Ronald Blythe releases a new book as he turns 100 Ronald Blythe releases a new book as he turns 100

Blythe turned down a film offer from the BBC but eventually accepted a pitch from the theatre director Peter Hall, a fellow Suffolk man. Blythe wrote a new synopsis inspired by the unfilmable book, and Hall asked ordinary rural people to improvise scenes with no script. Blythe oversaw every day of filming and played an apt cameo as a vicar. Nearly 15 million people watched Akenfield when it was broadcast on London Weekend Television in early 1975. a b c d e f g h Mount, Harry. "Rural idol: Ronald Blythe, author of Akenfield, at 90", The Spectator, 13 October 2012. Retrieved 6 November 2012. There is almost a prophesy in Blythe’s words as December arrives and he fights against the shortness of daylight hours, determined to complete the task of cutting off the dead limb of the quince tree, The old people who thrived in The View in Winter were those, Blythe concluded, who were able to preserve their “spiritual vitality, a vividness, an imaginative sort of energy”. This credo served him well as he grew older, although he was mistaken in another respect. The old, he wrote, are “cared for, surrounded with kindliness, and people are often interested in what they say; but they are not truly loved and they know it”.

Beginning with the arrival of snow on New Year’s Day and ending with Christmas carols sung in the village church, Next to Nature invites us to witness a simple life richly lived. With gentle wit and keen observation Blythe meditates on his life and faith, on literature, art and history, and on our place in the landscape.

Next to Nature by Ronald Blythe | Waterstones

The National Portrait Gallery has two portraits of Blythe, [30] a 2005 C-type print by Mark Gerson and a 1990 bromide print by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies. A 2014 terracotta head by Jon Edgar is featured in his 2015 collection of poems Decadal. Beginning with the arrival of snow on New Year's Day and ending with Christmas carols sung in the village church, Next to Nature invites us to witness a simple life richly lived. With gentle wit and keen observation Blythe meditates on his life and faith, on literature, art and history, and on our place in the landscape. Although I actually haven't worked this land but I have seen the land ploughed by horses, so I have a feeling and understanding in that respect.” Akenfield, the novel, is a study of what people regarded as a timeless way-of-life, but Ronald could recognise signs of change – although resolutely unsentimental, his book was eulogy for a rural idyll that had lasted for nearly two thousand years. The book was such a huge success, drawn from a series of interviews with Suffolk natives Blythe conducted between 1966-67, that it was immediately turned into a film by Suffolk-born National Theatre director Peter Hall. In his 50s, Blythe wrote The View in Winter, a moving account of growing old which Collins feels is due a revival. “It’s a wonderful book, a very positive view of old age. He lives an incredibly contented life.” Collins helped his mentor “retire” in 2017 and began to manage his affairs after asking him about a pile of unpaid bills and receiving Blythe’s answer: “I’ve decided I’ve given them enough money over the years. I’m not giving them any more!”He was almost as reticent about his faith, but his writing was deeply suffused in his Christian beliefs and his knowledge of the scriptures. He was a lay reader – deputising for vicars across several parishes – and became a lay canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, but turned down the chance to become a priest. Blythe’s next book, The View in Winter (1979), was a prescient examination of old age in a society that did not value it, at a time when more people than ever reached it. The “disaster” suffered by the old, he wrote, is “nobody sees them any more as they see themselves”. Blythe regarded it as his best book. While he was writing it, Kühlenthal died, and Blythe moved into the Nashes’ old farm, Bottengoms, to look after the elderly Nash. When Nash died a year later, he left the house to Blythe. There Blythe lived for the rest of his life, writing beautifully about his home in At the Yeoman’s House (2011).

Ronald Blythe - Wikipedia Ronald Blythe - Wikipedia

No one had much money but it was a good pub time, a great time for talking,” he recalled later. “People weren't getting drunk or anything like that. There was no music. There were just quiet places where people used to meet each other. Blythe has long championed the poet John Clare, and there are similarities, as Olivia Laing observes, in Blythe’s “attentive and unsentimental” view of the countryside. When he writes about “gaudy” fields of borage, Blythe knows how it is harvested and where it will be sold. “A very Clare-like knowledge, this, obtained by the steady, perpetual listening that gave Akenfield its power,” Laing writes. Blythe was a lay reader in the Church of England and a lay canon at St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds. [3] [26] He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature from 1970 [27] and was president of the John Clare Society from its foundation. [8] His book, At Helpston, is a series of essays on the poet John Clare. [13] Recognition [ edit ] Awards [ edit ] It is an introduction that honours a friendship that is as rare as hen’s teeth, and writing this review following Blythe’s death, my heart goes out to Mr Mabey, who will miss walking and talking along those wildflower strewn pathways and the extraordinary gentleman he had the privilege of knowing so well.

A life rooted in East Anglia has given Blythe a rare depth of vision. His writing is attuned to the physicality of existence, attentive to the world around him, and always listening to people and other species, as here, in June: The Nash wood engraving that closes the December section is of a Bee Orchid, a commonly known British wildflower that is becoming scarce, but is most often found inhabiting the meadows and farmlands of Suffolk. The once common ways are diminishing, as are those who remember and tell their stories. We will not encounter the likes of Ronald Blythe again. So, a fuddy-duddy then; a man embedded in the old ways that he believes were best, uninterested in, and indeed, scathing about, life in the present. Yes? No. His father, Albert, had served in the Suffolk Regiment and fought at Gallipoli and Blythe was conscripted during the second world war. Early on in his training, his superiors decided he was unfit for service – friends said he was incapable of hurting a fly – and he returned to East Anglia to work, quietly, as a reference librarian in Colchester library. Blythe lived briefly at Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast (as recalled in his 2013 book The Time by the Sea) before moving to Debach. [5] For three years in the late 1950s he worked for Benjamin Britten at the Aldeburgh Festival, editing programmes and doing pieces of translation. [6] [7] He met E. M. Forster, [9] [10] was briefly involved with Patricia Highsmith, [5] [9] [10] spent time with the Nashes, and was part of the Bohemian world associated with the artists of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End near Hadleigh, run by Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines. [7] "I was a poet but I longed to be a painter like the rest of them," Blythe told The Guardian. "What I basically am is a listener and a watcher. I absorb, without asking questions, but I don't forget things, and I was inspired by a lot of these people because they worked so hard and didn't make a fuss. They just lived their lives in a very independent and disciplined way." [9] Writing [ edit ]