Description

As the celebrated author of Akenfield Ronald Blythe turns 100 this year Next to Nature brings together a seasonal collection from the very best of a lifetime of writing

Ronald Blythe lives 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 is Bottengoms Farm a sturdy yeomans house once owned by the artist John Nash From here Blythe has 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

Beginning with the arrival of snow on New Years 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

It is a celebration of one of our greatest living writers and an unforgettable ode to the English countryside

One of the great prose stylists on the twentieth century a modern Hazlitt Mark Cocker
Englands greatest living country writer INDEPENDENT

P 2022 Hodder amp Stoughton Limited