NEXT TO NATURE: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

'The greatest living writer on the English countryside...Blythe's writing dances with self-deprecating wit, rebellious asides, sharp portraits of fellow writers and notes of worldliness.' - Patrick Barkham, Guardian. With all the charm, wonder and eccentricity, here is country life in which to immerse yourself in an East Anglian year as we are reminded of why we love and value the rhythms and realities of rural life. Light as air and full of philosophy, the book is time travel within a sentence, a latter-day Book of Hours to turn to for amusement, inspiration and comfort. Beginning with the arrival of snow on New Year's Day and ending with Christmas carols sung in the village church, Ronald Blythe invites us to witness a simple life richly lived. He meditates on his life and faith, on literature, art and history, and our place in the landscape. 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. With many biblical and literary references from the enthusiastic church warden, author of Akenfield and the Word column in Church Times. 472pp woodcut illus.