Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

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John Nash bequeathed the Elizabethan Yeoman’s House – situated in the village of Wormingford and at the end of an overgrown farm track, amidst the rolling countryside of the Stour Valley – to Blythe, who continued to live there until the end of his life. 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. The eldest of six children, Blythe was born in Acton, near Lavenham, into a family of farm labourers rooted in rural Suffolk. Akenfield, a portrait of a rural life rapidly disappearing from view, was immediately acclaimed as a classic when it was published in 1969.

Next to Nature : Ronald Blythe (author), : 9781399804660 Next to Nature : Ronald Blythe (author), : 9781399804660

He served during the early years of the Second World War before being demobbed in early 1944 when he gained, what was at the time.

But connoisseurs of country writing have cherished his work for decades, and there is nothing old fashioned about his weekly column in Anglican newspaper the Church Times, “Word from Wormingford”. So, you will find everything about Blythe and yet oddly little, from this book or any other, which is refreshing. Each month in his year, is prefaced by a brief panegyric by one of twelve individuals saluted in their own fields.

Next to Nature by Ronald Blythe | Waterstones Next to Nature by Ronald Blythe | Waterstones

Ronald agreed: “"I think what makes Akenfield so popular – both the book and the film – is that it captures the spirit of Suffolk. Although his faith and work for the church has dominated his life for decades – he was appointed a lay canon in 2003 and his column for The Church Times ‘A Word From Wormingford’ is still a wry must read – Ronald's enduring claim to fame has to be his 1969 novel Akenfield, a moving and atmospheric look at rural life stretching from 1880 to 1966.

On the first read, I struggled to keep up with the sheer lavishness of detail and breadth of observational details. The column ran from 1993 to 2017, engendering a series of books, and Next To Nature, is a celebratory compilation from those volumes of writing, published to coincide with Blythe’s centenary. In an interview in 2001 for Anglia Ruskin University he described himself as "a chronic reader", in his youth immersing himself in French literature and writing poetry. 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.

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

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. But Blythe, who has spent all his 10 decades living within 50 miles of where he was born, has also devoted millions more words – in history, fiction, and luminous essays and columns – to describe with poetry and precision not simply rural folk but the very essence of existence.An account of night-walking is “a miniature masterpiece”, according to another contributor and friend, Robert Macfarlane. In the 1970s Blythe nursed John Nash in ill health, leading him to publish his reflections on old age in 1979 in The View in Winter.