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 ]

Next to Nature by Ronald Blythe | Hachette UK Next to Nature by Ronald Blythe | Hachette UK

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. Doney, Malcolm. "Figure in a landscape" (requires subscription), Church Times, 2 November 2012. Retrieved 7 November 2012. 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. 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!”Parker, Peter. "At the Yeoman's House and At Helpston by Ronald Blythe: review", The Daily Telegraph, 23 December 2011. Retrieved 7 November 2012. Ronald George Blythe CBE FRSL (6 November 1922 – 14 January 2023) was a British writer, essayist and editor, best known for his work Akenfield (1969), an account of agricultural life in Suffolk from the turn of the century to the 1960s. He wrote a long-running and considerably praised weekly column in the Church Times entitled "Word from Wormingford". [1] [2] [3] Early life and education [ edit ]

Ronald Blythe is so revered | The Spectator Why Ronald Blythe is so revered | The Spectator

The eldest of six children, Blythe was born in Acton, near Lavenham, into a family of farm labourers rooted in rural Suffolk. His surname comes from the Blyth, a small Suffolk river, but his mother and her family were Londoners. His mother, Matilda (nee Elkins), a nurse, passed to him her love of books. Although Blythe left school at 14, by then he had already established a voracious reading habit – “never indoors, where one might be given something to do,” he remembered – which became his education. 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 ] He befriended local writers including the poet James Turner, who helped his passage into a bohemian, creative Suffolk circle that included Sir Cedric Morris, who taught Lucian Freud and Maggi Hambling and lived nearby with his partner, Arthur Lett-Haines. Blythe “longed to be a writer”, he said, and he listened and learned – inspired by the example of poet friends including Turner (the unnamed poet in Akenfield) and WR Rodgers of how to live with very little money. “It was a kind of apprenticeship,” he once recalled. The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919-1940 (Hamish Hamilton, 1963) - republished by The Folio Society, 2015 Of night-walking, Blythe wrote that everywhere was “all so perfectly interesting that one might never go to bed”. According to Macfarlane, this captures Blythe’s sensibility in a sentence: “inquisitive, wandering, democratic, giving us the truth on the ground”. His appreciation for everything extends to his own mortality. “He’s philosophical, he doesn’t complain and he’s interested,” Collins says. “He would be interested in dying – he finds it all fascinating.”In 1969 he published Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village, a fictionalised account of life in a Suffolk village from 1880 to 1966. Blythe had spent the winter of 1966–7 listening to three generations of his neighbours in the Suffolk villages of Charsfield and Debach, recording their views on education, class, welfare, religion, farming and death. [7] [13] [14] 'Akenfield' is a made-up placename based partly upon Akenham (a small village just north of Ipswich) and probably partly on Charsfield. [15] "When I wrote Akenfield," Blythe said, "I had no idea that anything particular was happening, but it was the last days of the old traditional rural life in Britain. And it vanished." [7] The book is regarded as a classic of its type [1] [16] and was made into a film, Akenfield, by Peter Hall in 1974. [1] [17] When the film was aired it attracted fifteen million viewers; [9] Blythe made an appearance as the vicar. [17] "I actually haven't worked on this land but I've seen the land ploughed by horses," Blythe told The Guardian in 2011. "So I have a feeling and understanding in that respect – of its glory and bitterness." [9] I was incessantly reading. We went to the old Repertory Theatre and then went for little meals at Neal & Robarts in the High Street - which we thought was very sophisticated. We'd go downstairs and there would be all the actors from the theatre.” 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: A Lifetime in the English Countryside (John Murray, 2022) - introduction by Richard Mabey, ISBN 978-1-3998-0466-0 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.