Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe

'Moving, candid, vivid, it is all that we could hope for in a memoir of this unique and treasured writer' ROWAN WILLIAMS 'An unusually intimate and affectionate portrait' PATRICK BARKHAM, GUARDIAN'As a boy I dreamed of scholars and saints wandering around markets and cornfields, and of artists and poets sitting under the trees.' Ronald Blythe (1922-2023), author of the inimitable Akenfield, was a prolific and poetic chronicler of rural and spiritual life, nature and literature. He spent a joyful century close to his Suffolk roots, time travelling in his imagination and publishing forty books and thousands of essays. His wide creative network included John and Christine Nash, Cedric Morris, Benjamin Britten, E. M. Forster, Patricia Highsmith and Richard Mabey. From finding Thomas Hardy in February rain and John Clare in country tracks, to talking to his white cat and reading through a dragonfly's wings, the Blythe gift was to marvel in the everyday. His writing was intimate, meditative