Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

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a b c House, Christian. "Ronald Blythe: My not so quiet village life", The Independent, 11 November 2012. Retrieved 24 November 2012. Components of the Scene: Stories, Poems, and Essays of the Second World War (Penguin, 1966) - republished as Writing in a War: Stories, Poems, and Essays of the Second World War (Penguin, 1982) In his 50s, Blythe wrote The View in Winter, a moving account of growing old which Collins feels is due a revival. “It’s a wonderful book, a very positive view of old age. He lives an incredibly contented life.” Collins helped his mentor “retire” in 2017 and began to manage his affairs after asking him about a pile of unpaid bills and receiving Blythe’s answer: “I’ve decided I’ve given them enough money over the years. I’m not giving them any more!” Divine Landscapes: A Pilgrimage through Britain's Sacred Places (Viking, 1986) - with photos by Edwin Smith

Ronald Blythe - Wikipedia Ronald Blythe - Wikipedia

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. [9] [16] In 1977 Blythe inherited Bottengoms Farm from Nash, who had bought the Elizabethan yeoman's house in 1944. [7] [18] He later published a book, First Friends (1999), based on a trunk of letters he found in the house that recorded the friendship between the Nash brothers, John's future wife, Christine Külenthal, and the artist Dora Carrington. [19] 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. He gained a social life cycling 15 miles to Colchester from his home in Sudbury to keep company with the young intellectuals and artists of the town – they progressed round the town’s traditional pubs having a half pint in each one putting the world to rights, expounding theories about the latest literary works they had just read, before heading home.It's extraordinary that a book I wrote in 1967, which is a world away from us now, and a film made in 1973/74, can have such an amazing and very gratifying hold over people's affections. The book begins with an introduction by Blythe’s friend, the distinguished writer and broadcaster, Richard Mabey, in which he, rightly, gives a brief biography of Blythe and prepares the reader for what is to come, but what is most touchingly evident is the respect and admiration from Mabey (educated through independent schools and an Alma Mater of St Catherine’s College, Oxford) for Blythe (largely a product of self-education), and the mutual acceptance of unwavering and enduring friendship between the two, despite diverging thoughts on some salient issues. Blythe was a Lay Reader in the Church of England who brushed off suggestions that he might become ordained with the counter-argument that laity have a specific place to play in the work of the church, as part of the quietly gathered congregation, rather than standing outside and above their number – he was ahead of his time; it is only in recent days that the church is slowly opening up to the importance of laity. Mabey claims no organised interest in faith. Blythe’s views on farming and land management occasionally differed from Mabey’s own, but both had the preservation of the countryside and its eco-system at their cores. The things they had in common far outweighed their dissimilarities, and I sensed a deeply warming humility in reading Mabey’s summation of their friendship,

Next To Nature by Ronald Blythe – Book Review

There is almost a prophesy in Blythe’s words as December arrives and he fights against the shortness of daylight hours, determined to complete the task of cutting off the dead limb of the quince tree, Blythe’s next book, The View in Winter (1979), was a prescient examination of old age in a society that did not value it, at a time when more people than ever reached it. The “disaster” suffered by the old, he wrote, is “nobody sees them any more as they see themselves”. Blythe regarded it as his best book. While he was writing it, Kühlenthal died, and Blythe moved into the Nashes’ old farm, Bottengoms, to look after the elderly Nash. When Nash died a year later, he left the house to Blythe. There Blythe lived for the rest of his life, writing beautifully about his home in At the Yeoman’s House (2011). 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.

His life at Bottengoms and the landscape around his home became the subject of Blythe's long-running column, "Word from Wormingford", in the Church Times from 1993 to 2017. [3] [20] These meditative reflections on literature, history, the Church of England and the natural world were subsequently collected together in books including A Parish Year (1998) and A Year at Bottengoms Farm (2006). [21] A compilation of his work, Aftermath: Selected Writings 1960–2010, appeared in 2010. [22] Later life and death [ edit ]