‘I would like to be remembered as a good writer and a good man . . . Writers are observers. We are natural lookers, watchers . . . it seems to me quite wonderful that I have so long been able to make a living from something I love so much.’
So wrote the writer, editor and famed chronicler of rural life Ronald Blythe for the
Mail on Sunday in 2004. That Ronald (or Ronnie, as he preferred to be known), who died aged 100 in early 2023, will be remembered as a good writer is irrefutable. Many
Slightly Foxed listeners will know and love not only
Akenfield – his bestselling 1969 portrait of a fictionalized East Anglian village – and the ‘
Word from Wormingford’ column for the
Church Times but also his unparalleled collection of short stories, poems, histories, novels and essays and, most recently, his year-long diary published as
Next to Nature, which celebrates the slow perpetual turn of the farming year, the liturgical calendar and the rhythms of village life.
In this episode Ronnie’s fellow writers and friends, Julia Blackburn and his biographer Ian Collins, lead us down the rough-hewn track to the ancient yeoman’s cottage he inherited from the artist
John Nash and into the nooks and crannies of his private world, tracing a life well lived and well written. We meet the changeling boy obsessed with books and nature and the self-taught youth whose good looks and charisma caused queues at the Colchester Library reference desk where he worked until he was discovered by the painter Christine Nash. It was she, recognizing his rare talent, who insisted he leave his job to pursue writing fulltime. We track Ronnie’s rich literary life path through his friends’ personal recollections, touching on tales of mid-winter meetings with E. M. Forster and an unlikely tryst with Patricia Highsmith. We muse on his spirituality and sexuality, his great love for life and his deep connection to the rural world with all its harshness and all its beauty, before heading for Bottengoms Farm where we hear how this great man and great writer saw out his last days in the company of good books and close friends.
For our book-lovers’ day out we head to the
quintessential English cottage of Ronnie’s hero, the poet and keen gardener John Clare. And, to finish, a round-up of book recommendations including another East Anglian delight in Adrian Bell’s
A Countryman’s Spring Notebook, an
unusual fishing memoir by the writer of the
Killing Eve series that’s about much more than
just fishing, and the intricately plotted revenge tale
No Name by Wilkie Collins, one of Ronnie’s favourite writers.
