The love of nature, the land, the creatures in the surrounding fields and trees meshes seamlessly with an encyclopaedic command of the back story to everything and the rhythms of the country churches. I’ve been reading this over Christmas along with Guy Shrubsole’s brilliant new The Lost Rainforests of Britain, and I’ve enjoyed every moment. His work, which has won countless awards, includes Akenfield (a Penguin 20th Century Classic and a feature film), Private Words, Field Work, Outsiders: a Book of Garden Friends and numerous other titles. To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. His] minute observation of places, people and plants, his ear for scraps of dialogue and his feeling for poetry and painting make everything about those days immediate .

Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual. 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. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time.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. I started this in March, and was playing catch-up until October, but really it would have worked much better read month by month; it's only a shame that there isn't quite an entry per day. I decided to read each month’s entries at the beginning of each month of 2023, which has undoubtedly been the best approach as it has made this wonderful book last a whole year. Still, he seems to have been regarded with enormous fondness, each month introduced by a famous friend of 'Ronnie', ranging from Rob Macfarlane through Rowan Williams to Maggi Hambling. It is a selection of Blythe’s regular columns for the Church Times, covering many years and arranged by month.

A nature diary, a reflection on changing rural life over the period from the Second World War, and a commentary on a deeply dedicated man of the church. Hope this book reaches a much wider audience than just readers who might remember Akenfield and those of us who immediately turned to the Word from Wormingford column when the Church Times landed on the door mat.

a work to amble through, seasonally, relishing the vivid dashes of colour and the precision and delicacy of the descriptions' THE SPECTATOR'My favourite read of the year . I think Ronald Blythe is a genius in a special, but perhaps overlooked, journalistic genre – the nature notes or country talk columns. This book was with me for most of the year that's passed, and I know I'm going to miss those safe and reassuring words of his which may be worth a revisit sometime.

There are some lovely passages and overall Ronald Blythe is an immense figure in his field but this is best reserved for those who share his Christian ways as first and foremost this is a book about his day to day religious thoughts.You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. Blythe's observations of nature are as unforced as breathing, and his descriptions are precise, celebratory and unexpected . John Clare covertly reading in a field crops up more than once, as also Jesus' epitaph for John the Baptist; a little repetition is perhaps inevitable given the structure of the book, though I suspect not solely because of that, given Blythe's occasional admission of parishioners catching him out.

We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The melancholy ever-rolling stream of Time through dark old rooms, the tilting photographs of past incumbents in damp vestries, the melting ice in dank shrubberies, the unwanted (or possibly longed for) companion catching one up in the foggy lane, and history seen as a medieval box of fun holy tricks to poke about in, these were among the experiences of January. 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.Occasionally one is lost, bringing mourning as surely as a villager passing on, and truth be told, these aren't the only intrusions of that other, less forgiving time: "in the market town, the stone griffins on the church tower maintain their watch, seeing off goblins and foul fiends. Being with Ronnie Blythe in one of his books is like being on a magic carpet, the exhilaration of being alive, and of nature, and the world -- Ian Collins * Today Programme * Next to Nature is the perfect memorial, a latter-day Book of Hours .