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. And yet Blythe does represent a way of life that has all but disappeared and Williams detects a gentle moral in his writing. “He’s certainly saying to us, ‘This may be a way of life that’s passing, and it’s not perfect, but you’re going to be much worse off if you’re not ready to learn from it, so let me help you learn from it.’ He’s saying, ‘Society is moving on – don’t forget this.” Doney, Malcolm. "Figure in a landscape" (requires subscription), Church Times, 2 November 2012. Retrieved 7 November 2012.

Next to Nature, review: the great Ronald Blythe turns 100

By using the words of the real farmworkers and their families, Blythe dealt matter-of-factly with the notions of life, death, farming, religion and the countryside. 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 ] 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 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.Parker, Peter. "At the Yeoman's House and At Helpston by Ronald Blythe: review", The Daily Telegraph, 23 December 2011. Retrieved 7 November 2012. But the tree has a history parallel with my own in the wild garden and I sense that I am losing part of myself as the boughs fall…’ (Blythe, 2022) Ronald agreed: “"I think what makes Akenfield so popular – both the book and the film – is that it captures the spirit of Suffolk. It's everyone's story. It's not the story of one person, or one family or even one village - it's everyone's story and I think that it strikes a chord.”

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

Having unravelled the threads and got a wider grasp of the content, I read a third time, to luxuriate in the wit, reflections and audacious splendour of it all, celebrating the words and language of someone who knew how to observe his world, squeeze every drop of texture, meaning and association from it, and, most importantly for his readers, knew how to translate those considerations to meaningful and elegant prose. Over 1967 and 1968, he listened to the citizens of Charsfield, recreating authentic country voices while somehow adding a poetry of his own. The result was a portrait of the “glory and bitterness” of the countryside: the penury and yet deep pride of the old, near-feudal farming life, and its obliteration in the 60s by a second agricultural revolution alongside the arrival of the car and television. East Anglian author appointed lay canon". East Anglian Daily Times. 24 March 2003 . Retrieved 12 February 2020. An indication of just how prescient Ronald had been was demonstrated in 2004 when he met Sir Peter Hall and Akenfield cast members Peggy Cole and Garrow Shand at Hoo Church to shoot extras for the DVD release of the film.

Akenfield's Ronald Blythe turns 100

Many of his scriptural references are as foreign to me as Mandarin, but through the medium of our long friendship I can glimpse common threads in our beliefs: the immemorial virtues of kindness and cooperation, but also of toil; the way the land – be it Palestinian desert or Suffolk prairie farm – moulds us as much as we mould it; the worth and autonomy of all Creation’s beings.’ (Mabey, 2022) Lambirth, Andrew. "Bookends: Spirit of place", The Spectator, 5 November 2011. Retrieved 6 November 2012. 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.”

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

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.Hall, Peter (20 November 2004). "My Dirty Weekends". The Guardian. p.19 . Retrieved 11 August 2010. Sensing a need to sit at the feet of this rural Gamaliel and slowly untwist the wisdom in each precious strand, I read for a second time, with a notebook and pen by my side, jotting down facts, quotes, things to enquire further about, and simply to play with the prose. It was in this interaction that, for me, the real appreciation of Next To Nature began. I have heard of devotees of Blythe who use his writing as morning meditation, taking one of the short sections daily and focusing their full attention on it and, with hindsight, I perceive that to be a sensible way of approaching it; after all, the individual pieces were originally presented as short, separate essays, not as a collection, and the content is so beautifully rich and crammed with sensory overload that, like a luxurious chocolate cake, the smallest portion is a feast. Blythe recovered, and also survived a recent fall. His dear ones bring him three meals a day and everyone is determined that he will still be in his home, as he wishes, when he dies. In an interview with this paper in the mid-1970s, he said: “When I wrote Akenfield, 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 just as the book came out.

Ronald Blythe at 100: ‘A watchful, curious and gratefully Ronald Blythe at 100: ‘A watchful, curious and gratefully

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). a b Pritchett, V.S. "Finite Variety" (requires subscription), The New York Review of Books, 8 November 1979. Retrieved 7 November 2012.Blythe was born in Acton, Suffolk, on 6 November 1922, [4] the eldest of six children. His father, Albert, who had seen action in the First World War at Gallipoli and in Palestine, came from generations of East Anglian farmers and farm workers. [5] His London-born mother, Matilda (née Elkins), had worked as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse during the war and passed on to her son her passion for books. [6] [5] [7] Blythe could remember as a child seeing the sugar beet being farmed by men in army greatcoats and puttees. [6] a b c House, Christian. "Ronald Blythe: My not so quiet village life", The Independent, 11 November 2012. Retrieved 24 November 2012.