, the English countryside (its seasons, creatures, landscapes, moods, natives), and the Church of England (its Bible, prayer book, liturgy, music, rituals, art, history), mainly as it is represented in the rural English church and parish – though he has a great love of cathedrals. 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. 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. If it is true about the driving, the computer and foreign countries, the rest does not follow. Here is a man whose eyes are clear and pick up every detail about life around him now, and whose judgment, though formed by the past, is exercised about the present. There is much he dislikes about the way we are now and he may lament how a world and a way of rural life have vanished, but he is not rose-tinted romantic about the way we were. Blythe came to wide public attention in 1969 with his book Akenfield, about life in a fictional Suffolk village (the name based partly on Akenham), later made into a magnificent film by Peter Hall – another Suffolk man. But connoisseurs of country writing have cherished his work for decades, and there is nothing old fashione){kind=link}
Next to Nature, a new anthology, is a perfect introduction to the author who has chronicled his patch of Suffolk since the 1960s
People like Ronald Blythe do not exist any more and they will not be making any new ones. How would it be possible? He is 100 today, and this celebratory selection from his writing will give anyone new to his life, work and character a good idea of the man and what he has both delighted in, stood for, and always wanted to share during his century. In no particular order these are East Anglia (especially Suffolk, in which he was born and has lived all his life), the English countryside (its seasons, creatures, landscapes, moods, natives), and the Church of England (its Bible, prayer book, liturgy, music, rituals, art, history), mainly as it is represented in the rural English church and parish – though he has a great love of cathedrals.
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.
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.
If it is true about the driving, the computer and foreign countries, the rest does not follow. Here is a man whose eyes are clear and pick up every detail about life around him now, and whose judgment, though formed by the past, is exercised about the present. There is much he dislikes about the way we are now and he may lament how a world and a way of rural life have vanished, but he is not rose-tinted romantic about the way we were.