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. 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. Doney, Malcolm. "Figure in a landscape" (requires subscription), Church Times, 2 November 2012. Retrieved 7 November 2012. Before ever opening the book, the reader is pulled into the summertime of a ‘Dorset Landscape’, (executed in 1930 using watercolour, chalk and graphite), standing on a high hill that casts a shadow in the foreground, looking down upon a stream around which a cluster of trees are leaning heavily in the wind, and beyond, another steep hill rises, partly prepared for cultivation, a lone tree standing near the crest. At first glance, it is dreamy; the colour palette pastoral and soothing, but it speaks deeper of the loneliness and harshness of making a living from, and dwelling, in the rural landscape, where tilling can be an upward struggle, and isolation from supportive community can take its toll. This friendship inspired his visual creativity. "I was a poet but I longed to be a painter like the rest of them," Blythe said 10 years ago in a 90th birthday interview. "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.”

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

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. 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. 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. The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919-1940 (Hamish Hamilton, 1963) - republished by The Folio Society, 2015

Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (Allen Lane, 1969) - republished by The Folio Society, 2002 a b Pritchett, V.S. "Finite Variety" (requires subscription), The New York Review of Books, 8 November 1979. Retrieved 7 November 2012.

Next to Nature by Ronald Blythe | Waterstones

This article was amended on 7 November 2022 to correct references to the location of Blythe’s home. 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] 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. A capacious work that contains multitudes . . . a work to amble through, seasonally, relishing the vivid dashes of colour and the precision and delicacy of the descriptions' THE SPECTATORBeginning 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. The artistic couple even found him a small house near Aldeburgh and introduced him to Benjamin Britten, who put Blythe to work writing programme material and doing translations for Aldeburgh Festival. 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] Blythe added: “A poet friend once advised me to ‘Put everything down. The total will surprise you.’ I took him at his word. For over 25 years I kept a day-book – a journal of life in a quiet corner of the English countryside. The total must run to over one million words. It has been a joy to revisit those diaries for this selection.”

Next To Nature by Ronald Blythe – Book Review

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. 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 ] A still from Peter Hall’s film of Akenfield. Blythe oversaw every day of filming and played a cameo as a vicar. Photograph: BFIHis 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. I am unsure if he has travelled abroad, but if he has it cannot have been extensively, often or for long and you will be hard put to find a word he has written about it. He has never learned to drive, just travelled on foot, by bike, train, bus – and, it has to be said, in cars driven by other people. He does not own a computer.