Ronald Blythe – författare

'The best portrait of rural life in England' Roger Deakin'Exquisite' John Updike'The finest contemporary writer on the English countryside' ObserverRonald Blythe's perceptive and vivid evocation of the rural Suffolk he had known since childhood was acclaimed as an instant classic when it was published in 1969. It reverberates with the voices of the village inhabitants, from the reminiscences of survivors of the Great War evoking days gone by, to the concerns of a younger generation of farm-workers and the fascinating and personal recollections of, among others, the local schoolteacher, doctor, blacksmith, saddler, district nurse and magistrate. Providing insights into the land, education, welfare, class, religion and death, Akenfield forms a unique document of a way of life that has, in many ways, disappeared.

'An enthralling collection of essays on personalties and events of the interwar years, taking in Amy Johnson's solo flights, the Jarrow marches, Lawrence of Arabia, Soho corruption, the Rector of Stiffkey and the Brighton Trunk Murders.' John Walsh, The OldieIn this brilliant reconstruction of life in England between the two world wars, Ronald Blythe highlights a number of key episodes and personalities which typify the flavour of those two extraordinary decades. He begins with the burial in Westminster Abbey of the Unknown Soldier. This was nearly two years after the last shot had been fired in battle and the near-delirium of 1919 - a boom year though few families were out of mourning - was giving way to the uneasy realization that the world was still far from being a place fit for heroes to live in.The period abounded with colourful figures whose idiosyncrasies Ronald Blythe relishes. The absurd Joynson-Hicks cleaning up London's morals while defending General Dyer shooting down nearly 400 Indians at Amritsar; Mrs Meyrick, the night-club queen of London, being regularly raided at the famous '43'; John Reith putting the B. B.C. on its feet and the public in its place; and headline stealers such as Amy Johnson and T. E. Lawrence.Behind this garish facade, the author shows the new writers emerging at the turn of the decade from their embarrassingly middle-class backgrounds and traces the birth of Britain's first radical intelligentsia. The popular front, the cartoonist David Low's Colonel Blimp and the Left Book Club characterise the much-changed political climate of the 1930s. There, dealing with Jarrow, the Spanish Civil War and Munich, Ronald Blythe show his capacity for writing with an urgency no less effective for its restraint. Coupled with the delightful astringency he brings to such rather less weighty matters as the Brighton trunk murders and the Rector of Stiffkey's remarkable capers, Ronald Blythe demonstrated in this early book his impressive gifts as a social historian.

A Treasonable Growth was Ronald Blythe's was first book and only novel. It is set in Aldeburgh, Suffolk shortly before the Second World War. Ronald Blythe himself has described it as his 'Forsterian novel' and even admits to going for walks with E. M. Forster while working on the novel 'although I never mentioned it.'Freda Bellingham, the founder of Copdock School, ensnares the unsuspecting Richard Brand in order to save her ramshackle foundation. At twenty-four, Richard is that perilous mixture, gauche, good and uncommitted. He falls straight into the morass of Copdock School.The time is just before the Second World War and already the less daring British exiles in Italy are planning to return home. Among them is the celebrated novelist, Sir Paul Abott, the nephew of Freda Bellingham. He quits his Sicilian villa for Suffolk and, like his aunt, decides he must have new blood. He needs someone, 'call it an amanuensis,' someone 'more than a typist and less than a friend.'In full flight from Freda Bellingham and Sir Paul Abbott, Richard joins forces with Mary Crawford, a marriage dreamer. But lovers should be strangers first and uncommitted by too close a knowledge of each other. At this point the aged hunters of these perplexed lovers should have moved in for the kill, but even their egocentricity had to bow before the larger madness which was to shatter their little world.

The Time by the Sea is about Ronald Blythe's life in Aldeburgh during the 1950s. He had originally come to the Suffolk coast as an aspiring young writer, but found himself drawn into Benjamin Britten's circle and began working for the Aldeburgh Festival. Although befriended by Imogen Holst and by E M Forster, part of him remained essentially solitary, alone in the landscape while surrounded by a stormy cultural sea. But this memoir gathers up many early experiences, sights and sounds: with Britten he explored ancient churches; with the botanist Denis Garrett he took delight in the marvellous shingle beaches and marshland plants; he worked alongside the celebrated photo-journalist Kurt Hutton. His muse was Christine Nash, wife of the artist John Nash. Published to coincide with the centenary of Britten's birth, this is a tale of music and painting, unforgettable words and fears. It describes the first steps of an East Anglian journey, an intimate appraisal of a vivid and memorable time.

'All the charm, wonder, eccentricity and vigour of country life is here in these pages, and told with such engaging directness, detail and colour . . . Bliss' STEPHEN FRY'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 SPECTATOR'My favourite read of the year . . . warm, funny and moving' SUNDAY TIMES'A writer whose pages you turn and then turn back immediately to re-read, relish and get by heart' SUSAN HILL, SUNDAY TELEGRAPHRonald Blythe lived at the end of an overgrown farm track deep in the rolling countryside of the Stour Valley, on the border between Suffolk and Essex. His home was Bottengoms Farm, a sturdy yeoman's house once owned by the artist John Nash. From here, Blythe spent almost half a century observing the slow turn of the agricultural year, the church year and village life in a series of rich, lyrical rural diaries.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.It is a celebration of one of our greatest nature writers, and an unforgettable ode to the English countryside.

Britain’s best loved rural writer chronicles the progress of the seasons in the Stour valley village where he has lived and worked among artists, writers, farmers and, increasingly, commuters. For all the changes in the contemporary countryside, timeless qualities remain and both are captured here with a poet’s understanding and imagination. The year takes its shape from the seasons of nature and the feasts and festivals of the Christian year. Each informs and illuminates the other in this loving celebration of nature’s gifts and neighbourly friendship. Literature, poetry, spirituality and memory all merge to create an exquisite series of stories of our times. These short essays first appeared in the ‘Word From Wormingford’ column, a popular back page feature of the Church Times.

With reverence and love, Britain’s most admired rural writer chronicles daily life in the Stour valley village, finding beauty and significance in its sheer ordinariness as well as in its many literary, artistic and historic associations. The year takes its shape from the seasons of nature and the feasts and festivals of the Christian year. Each informs and illuminates the other in this loving celebration of nature’s gifts and neighbourly friendship. Literature, poetry, spirituality and memory all merge to create an exquisite series of stories of our times. These delightful essays first appeared in the ‘Word From Wormingford’ column, a popular back page feature of the Church Times for some 20 years. It was praised as one of the finest journalistic columns by the Guardian in November 2012.

'The View in Winter' is a timeless and moving study of the perplexities of living to a great age, as related by a wide range of men and women: miners, villagers, doctors, teachers, craftsmen, soldiers, priests, the widowed and long-retired. Their voices are set in the context of what literature, art, religion and medicine over the centuries have said about ageing. The result is an acclaimed and compelling reflection on an inevitable aspect of our human experience.

An illustrated collection of the author's regular weekly column on the back page of the "Church Times", where, with a poet's eye, he observes the comings and goings of the rural world he sees from his ancient farmhouse in Constable country.

Open the ancient door of an old church, says Ronald Blythe, and framed in the silence is a house of words where everything has been said: centuries of birth, marriage and death words, gossip, poetry, philosophy, rant, eloquence, learning, nonsense, the language of hymn writers and Bible translators - all of it spoken in one place. This work contains words spoken by Ronald Blythe in the churches he serves as a Reader in the Church of England, and as the local writer expected to add his own distinctive voice. Originating as addresses given at Matins or Evensong, they follow various paths into old and new liturgies, literature and the local countryside. They bring together the author's delight in language, his recollections of farming, his recognition of friends and neighbours, and the hopes he has found in faith.

As suspicious as one often is of the other, literature and spirituality enjoy a rich and deep relationship. They have been inextricably linked since narrative and symbol first met in the earliest biblical writings.Story, poetry and drama have always been used to express the human search for religious meaning and to modulate the divine voice. Equally, 'Take Christianity out of English literature,' asks Ronald Blythe in this book, 'and what is left?'In this fascinating and spirited collection of essays the novelist Penelope Lively explores fiction writing as an act of creation with its clear spiritual resonances. A. N. Wilson inveighs against the modern church for its desecration of the language which shaped and nurtured it. The poet David Scott looks at the lonely, subversive calling of the priest-poet from Caedmon to R. S. Thomas, and Richard Marsh considers David Jones's writings in the First World War where, for many, religion turned to mud and the only way across that vast no man's land was by the same ancient way of myth and symbol, the way that literature and spirituality have travelled together since the beginning.

Open the ancient door of an old church, says Ronald Blythe, and framed in the silence is a house of words where everything has been said: centuries of birth, marriage and death words, gossip, poetry, philosophy, rant, eloquence, learning, nonsense, the language of hymn writers and Bible translators - all of it spoken in one place. This work contains words spoken by Ronald Blythe in the churches he serves as a Reader in the Church of England, and as the local writer expected to add his own distinctive voice. Originating as addresses given at Matins or Evensong, they follow various paths into old and new liturgies, literature and the local countryside. They bring together the author's delight in language, his recollections of farming, his recognition of friends and neighbours, and the hopes he has found in faith.

Written at a time of notoriously lax standards in the Church of England, George Herbert's essay on the calling and work of a parish priest remains fresh and full of wisdom for all who are pursuing this vocation today.

These reflections weave together literature, poetry, biography, botany, nature and scripture to offer incisive comment on contemporary life. Resonating with the pattern of the natural and litugical year, it provides a commentary on experiencing the sacred day to day.

'The View in Winter' is a timeless and moving study of the perplexities of living to a great age, as related by a wide range of men and women: miners, villagers, doctors, teachers, craftsmen, soldiers, priests, the widowed and long-retired. Their voices are set in the context of what literature, art, religion and medicine over the centuries have said about ageing. The result is an acclaimed and compelling reflection on an inevitable aspect of our human experience.

Features a collection of sixty "Word From Wormingford" columns from the back page of the "Church Times", published in the autumn of 2006. This work presents mini essays that reflect the natural landscape, the changing seasons, village life, art, poetry, the stories that ancient churches tell.

An illustrated collection of the author's regular weekly column on the back page of the "Church Times", where, with a poet's eye, he observes the comings and goings of the rural world he sees from his ancient farmhouse in Constable country.

An illustrated collection of the author's regular weekly column on the back page of the "Church Times", where, with a poet's eye, he observes the comings and goings of the rural world he sees from his ancient farmhouse in Constable country.

An illustrated collection of the author's regular weekly column on the back page of the "Church Times", where, with a poet's eye, he observes the comings and goings of the rural world he sees from his ancient farmhouse in Constable country.

The year takes its shape from the seasons of nature and the feasts and festivals of the Christian year. Each informs and illuminates the other in this loving celebration of nature's gifts and neighbourly friendship. Literature, poetry, spirituality and memory all merge to create an exquisite series of stories of our times. For all the changes in the contemporary countryside, timeless qualities remain and both are captured here with a poet's understanding and imagination.

Ronald Blythe has spent his life among the artists and writers of his native Suffolk. His books, especially the bestselling "Akenfield", have given East Anglia a distinctive literary voice. Here we accompany Ronald through the lanes of Constable country, we observe him in his study following his early morning writing routine, we meet John Clare, Traherne and countless other writers who continue to influence him, we join him in the ancient tradition of Anglican worship season by season, and luxuriate in the simple beauty of his ancient farmhouse and its garden, made by the artist John Nash. Literature, poetry, spirituality and memory all merge to create exquisite stories for our times.