Most importantly, in 1951 he met the artist Christine Kühlenthal, wife of the painter John Nash. Kühlenthal encouraged his writing and championed him: Blythe edited Aldeburgh festival programmes for Benjamin Britten and even ran errands for EM Forster, who took a shine to the shy young man. Blythe helped Forster compile an index for Forster’s 1956 biography of his great-aunt, Marianne Thornton. He was educated at St Peter's and St Gregory's school in Sudbury, Suffolk, [8] and grew up exploring churches, architecture, plants and books. [6] He left school at 14 [5] but was, he said, "a chronic reader", [7] immersing himself in French literature and writing poetry. [9] Literary career [ edit ] Early cultural connections [ edit ]

Next to Nature (Signed) - Ronald Blythe - The Bookery Next to Nature (Signed) - Ronald Blythe - The Bookery

He turned 100 on 6 November 2022 [24] and died at his home just over two months later, on 14 January 2023. [25] Other positions [ edit ] I cannot remember when I first discovered him, but I certainly know that it was his sparkling prose that caught and held me. His writing is rich but he never overeggs his puddings. His descriptions of the world around him, and records of its strange doings, written in ever-fresh prose, are as vivid as paintings – indeed, he originally wanted to be a painter, and the house in which he has lived for most of his adult life, Bottengoms Farm, was inherited from the painter John Nash. He has always lived among artists, poets, occasionally musicians, as well as working countrymen and faithful churchgoers.In later years, Blythe drew praise for his short stories and essays, including a series of meditations on the 19th-century rural poet John Clare. Many writers who were later grouped together as “nature writers” became his friends, including Mabey, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin. The Guardian, "Ronald Blythe at 100: 'A watchful, curious and gratefully amazed vision of life'", 5 November 2022. Retrieved 18 November 2022.

Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside - Goodreads

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. Honorary Graduates, Orations and responses: Ronald Blythe", University of Essex, 12 July 2002. Retrieved 6 November 2012. Components of the Scene: Stories, Poems, and Essays of the Second World War (Penguin, 1966) - republished as Writing in a War: Stories, Poems, and Essays of the Second World War (Penguin, 1982)

🍪 Privacy & Transparency

We learn much about the man from his writing, but not all. His private life is not on public view. He has many friends, many more acquaintances, everyone seems to like him, yet he does not invite us far over his threshold. But, lest the reader become maudlin, Vikram Seth, a writer of beautiful description himself, raises an acrostic poem of celebration to Blythe, and as we close this remarkable book leaving behind Blythe’s legacy of words, the author reminds us of the words of Albert Camus, ‘In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer’. The cover of Next To Nature flips shut, the illuminated sepia shades of Nash’s watercolour, ‘Winter Afternoon’ (1945) glistens, the bright light on the horizon focuses our gaze, and we can sense that, for Blair, summer has come. 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 ] It's extraordinary that a book I wrote in 1967, which is a world away from us now, and a film made in 1973/74, can have such an amazing and very gratifying hold over people's affections.