Ronald Blythe

Henry James Jr.

Patricia Crick

The Awkward Age (Penguin Classics)

Portrait of an English Village (Common Reader Editions)

Akenfield

Ronald Blythe's Akenfield, which gives voice to the inhabitants of a rural village in Suffolk, England, was an early and shining example of what an oral history could be. This colorful, perceptive portrayal of country life reverberates with the voices of the village inhabitants. Blythe let his subjects speak their minds, and we are privileged to listen in on recollections and opinions of a wide variety of village residents, from the schoolteacher to the blacksmith, from survivors of World War I to the youngest generation of farmworkers—and nearly everyone in between. Providing insights into nearly a century of lived experience of farming, education, class struggle, and religious practice,Akenfield forms a unique document of a way of life that has, in many ways, disappeared since the book's first publication in 1969.

Portrait of an English Village

John Nash

Nash Cats' Story

Offers a portrayal of a man who has glimpsed the hollowness of his existence. But beyond depicting one man's disillusionment, this novel exposes the universal human condition and its absurdities - and our innocence that, once lost, can never be recaptured.

A Lifetime in the English Countryside

Next to Nature

A Writer's Day-Book (Trent Essays)

The Stories of Ronald Blythe

a pilgrimage through Britain's sacred places

Divine landscapes

A Parish Year

Word from Wormingford

England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1919-1940

Phoenix: The Age of Illusion

Woven from the words of the inhabitants of a small Suffolk village in the 1960s, Akenfield is a masterpiece of twentieth-century English literature, a scrupulously observed and deeply affecting portrait of a place and people and a now vanished way of life. Ronald Blythe’s wonderful book raises enduring questions about the relations between memory and modernity, nature and human nature, silence and speech.

These mini essays reflect on the natural landscape, the changing seasons, village life, art, poetry, the stories that ancient churches tell, and the Christian year. They refresh one's vision of one's own daily routine and surroundings and can be read over and over again, like poetry.

A Year at Bottengoms Farm

'The View in Winter' is a timeless and moving study of the perplexities of living to a great age, as related by a wide range of men and women: miners, villagers, doctors, teachers, craftsmen, soldiers, priests, the widowed and long-retired. Their voices are set in the context of what literature, art, religion and medicine over the centuries have said about ageing. The result is an acclaimed and compelling reflection on an inevitable aspect of our human experience.

Reflections on Old Age

The View in Winter

This colourful, perceptive portrayal of English country life 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 farming, education, welfare, class, religion and death, Akenfield forms a unique document of a way of life that has, in many ways, disappeared.

Born and brought up in rural Suffolk, Ronald Blythe was fascinated by the rhythms of country life and the stories of the people he had known since childhood. In this perceptive and moving evocation of his home, the villagers speak candidly about their lives, from the reminiscences of survivors of the First World War to a younger generation of farm workers, as well as the personal recollections of a school teacher, blacksmith, saddler, bellringer and district nurse. Together they give us the voice of a village, and of a vanished rural England. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

Voices of Akenfield

Richard J. Hand

Eric Robinson

Seamus Heaney

Richard Mabey

Edward Strickland

Victoria Leatham

Simon Rae

Mark Storey

John Wain

Alan Brownjohn

John Barrell

Trevor Hold

Edward Storey

Gavin Ewart

Sean Street

Lotte Kramer

Greg Crossan

George Dixon

Tom Bates

Bob Heyes

E.P. Thompson

William Westwood

Brian Blade

Andrew Motion 

Roger Frith

R.S. Thomas

The official Journal of the John Clare Society, published annually to reflect the interest in, and approaches to, the life and work of the poet John Clare.

John Clare Society Journal, 12 (1993)

Stories of rural England tell of a widow moving back to London to live with her elderly father, a young man who returns from India to his country house, and a spinster who sees a dragon in the rain

The Visitors

A wonderful memoir of the writer's time at Aldeburgh, as part of Benjamin Britten's circle - published in Britten's centenary year.

Alderburgh 1955-1958

The Time by the Sea

Ronald Blythe

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