Search results for ""author ronald blythe""

'All the charm, wonder, eccentricity and vigour of country life is here in these pages, and told with such engaging directness, detail and colour. To immerse yourself in this East Anglian year is be reminded of why we love and value the rhythms and realities of rural life. 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.

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'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.

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'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.

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What happens in an old farmhouse when the farmers have left? Perhaps only a poet-historian-storyteller can say. These traditional work centres were established centuries ago, sometimes in the village street, often far away in their own fields. But the pattern of the toil was the same. This quietly vanished a few years ago. Ronald Blythe describes the going of it in his celebrated Akenfield. Some years before this his friend John Nash had rescued an already abandoned farmhouse in the Stour Valley from total dereliction. It was called Bottengoms. Nobody knows why. John Nash called himself an Artist-Plantsman. Behind both artist and writer there existed many generations of farmers and shepherds. Old houses will always have their say. For Ronald Blythe at Bottengoms Farm it was in the form of a meditation on past and present. He found that the ancient place asked more questions than it gave answers, and was challenging, and was energetic rather than spent. It must have been part of a prehistoric settlement in a stony valley and also a farm seen by the young John Constable, whose uncles ground its corn. For they were Bottengoms neighbours, and were known to the artist as the Wormingford folk. Ronald Blythe himself knows what the old farm is talking about. Its great days and routine days, its seasonal labour and play, its faith and despair. Its land was both poor and rich in snatches, flint fields and mossy pastures, vast trees and weeds and high skies. Once Queen Elizabeth arrived to hunt below where the Stone Age people lay in their circular graves. Inside Bottengoms there are telling handprints and footprints everywhere, and this is their tale. It is a tale told by a true countryman who has looked and listened all his life. And mostly in his native place.

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Making her debut in London society, Nanda Brookenham is being groomed for the marriage market. Thrust suddenly into the superficial and immoral circle that surrounds her mother, the innocent but independent-minded young woman even finds herself in competition with Mrs Brookenham for the affection of the man she admires. Only an elderly bachelor, Mr Longdon, is immune to this world of greed and scheming, and determines to rescue Nanda from its corrupting influences out of loyalty to the deep love he once felt for her grandmother. In The Awkward Age (1899), Henry James explores the English character, and the clash between old and new money with a light and subtly ironic touch to create a devastating critique of society and its machinations.

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