I have read, met and interviewed a cavalcade of outstanding East Anglian writers over a busy career as journalist, broadcaster and lover of good books.
The chance to savour and sum up a prolific and highly praised output ,sown, tilled and harvested by one of my long-time favourites, comes as both sheer delight and daunting challenge … how to do justice to the remarkably creative furrows, long life and rich legacy of Ronald Blythe.
He did it all without ever owning a car, computer or mobile phone.
And he rarely travelled more than a few miles from his idyllic base down a rutted track on the Suffolk-Essex border, a Tudor longhouse called Bottengons, bequeathed to him by artist friends John and Christine Nash.
Ronnie, as he liked to be called, in turn willed his wonderful hideaway to Essex Wildlife Trust as a retreat for writers, artists and naturalists.
The celebrated author died shortly after reaching his century on January 24, 2023, and publication of the best-selling selection of his essays, Next To Nature, A Lifetime in the English Countryside, on parade as sumptuous monthly treats.
Now we welcome another surefire winner, Blythe Spirit, a compelling comprehensive biography by my former EDP colleague Ian Collins, now firmly established in his own right as successful writer and arts curator.
He dips deeply purposefully into a close 35-year friendship for a volume teeming with colourful characters, telling episodes and fascinating insights into the way Ronnie set about his literary calling.
Ian sets the tribute bar high in a delightful preface of praise for his faithful mentor: “
An old charmer aged into youthfulness with his liveliest writings in his seventies and eighties.
He was alert to the past while absolutely alive in the present.
The future held no fear for him due to the indelible but somehow indefinable nature of his faith.
He was rooted in the seasonal cycle of growth, death and rebirth - the East Anglian earth itself.
A much-lauded career spanned across seven decades with more than forty volumes of elegant wise, and witty stories, novels, poems, essays and memoirs, as well as anthologies, literary criticism, reportage and social history.
Akenfield, his portrait of an English village, first published in 1969, now glows with modern classic status.
This powerful and poetic account of life in a Suffolk farming community was also adapted into a feature film by Peter Hall.
Blythe himself played part of the vicar … complementing real-life roles as lay reader and long-running columnist in the Church Times with Word From Wormingford, reflections throughout a rural parish year, also published in book form.
It’s hardly surprising to find his inspiration for writing sparked by working in a library after serving briefly during the Second World War. From finding peasant poet John Clare along country tracks and Thomas Hardly in February rain, the Blythe gift was to marvel in the everyday His writing brought invites to work with such luminaries as Benjamin Britten, EM Forster, Patricia Highsmith and many others.
He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and awarded their prestigious Benson Medal in 2006 and 2027. He was appointed a CBE for services ro literature.
My mardling encounters with him, at a couple of uplifting public talks along the countryside trail, and a much-cherished interview when he hopped over the border for a lengthy treat on BBC Radio Norfolk in the mid-1980s. brought into a focus an almost-serene figure pleased to chat about anything and everything rather than concentrate himself.
Blythe Spirit, drawing on unparalleled access to letters, notebooks, published works, drafts and conversations from decades of close friendship, is a vibrant song of praise demanding a large and thankful congregation grateful for all creatures great and small and those who champion them and an environment in which they can survive and flourish.
This handsome hardback, is published by John Murray at £25 and printed and bound by Clays of Bungay. to enhance a proudly Anglian product. Ian Collins will be signing copies in the Jarrolds books department in Norwich on Wednesday, November 27, between 11am and noon.
He will also give the annual East Anglia Arts Fund lecture in The Forum that evening (5pm EAAF members only). His subject? Ronald Blythe, naturally.
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