BLYTHE SPIRIT

Moving candid vivid it is all that we could hope for in a memoir of this unique and treasured writer ROWAN WILLIAMS An unusually intimate and affectionate portrait PATRICK BARKHAM GUARDIAN As a boy I dreamed of scholars and saints wandering around markets and cornfields and of artists and poets sitting under the trees Ronald Blythe 1922 2023 author of the inimitable Akenfield was a prolific and poetic chronicler of rural and spiritual life nature and literature He spent a joyful century close to his Suffolk roots time travelling in his imagination and publishing forty books and thousands of essays His wide creative network included John and Christine Nash Cedric Morris Benjamin Britten E M Forster Patricia Highsmith and Richard Mabey From finding Thomas Hardy in February rain and John Clare in country tracks to talking to his white cat and reading through a dragonfly s wings the Blythe gift was to marvel in the everyday His writing was intimate meditative and often laced with a wry humour inviting readers to share his enchanting perspective on the world Yet few knew the real Ronald Blythe Leaving school at 14 he educated himself in libraries churches and walks in the East Anglian landscape He never spoke about early poverty