Next to Nature

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What to expect

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 yeoman's 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 Year's 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
'England's greatest living country writer' INDEPENDENT

(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critics Review

My favourite read of the year . . . I do not know of another work that lets you so directly into another person's mind and memory . . . a warm, funny and moving nature memoir
Sunday Times
Blythe is a writer whose pages you turn and then turn back immediately to re-read, relish and get by heart particular phrases and images . . . We should be grateful to have him and his beautiful pages, and for the privilege of spending so many ordinary and yet rare and precious days in his company
Telegraph 5* review
A capacious book that contains multitudes . . . It is a work to amble through, seasonally, relishing the vivid dashes of colour and the precision and delicacy of the descriptions
The Spectator
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
Guardian
Ronald Blythe's eye and voice bring the countryside alive like a Brueghel painting. All the charm, wonder, eccentricity and vigour of country life is here in these pages, and told with such engaging directness, detail and colour. To immerse yourself in this East Anglian year is be reminded of why we love and value the rhythms and realities of rural life. Bliss
STEPHEN FRY
A book of priceless wisdom . . . to read as the year unfolds. My Blythe has a great, often droll sense of humour . . . and writes with a spry, unforced elegance
Country Life
[His diary] is the best of his writing, its light as air and full of philosophy. . . a wonderful, original, pure tapestry. He could time travel within a single sentence, going from personal to local to global. Being with Ronnie Blythe in one of his books is like being on a magic carpet, the exhilaration of being alive, and of nature, and the world
Today Programme
Next to Nature is the perfect memorial, a latter-day Book of Hours . . . I'm resolved to return to this monthly for amusement, inspiration and comfort
The Times, Audiobook of the Week
A near-legendary chronicler of a particular patch of countryside and country life
Times Radio
The prose is fresher than most contemporary nature writing and, unlike many still-living nature writers, Blythe is concerned with people who live and work in the countryside
The Times
Praise for Ronald Blythe
England's greatest living country writer
Independent
Blythe's observations of nature are as unforced as breathing, and his descriptions are precise, celebratory and unexpected . . . [He] seduces even the irreligious reader into an appreciation of the meshing of the temporal and the timeless
Guardian
One of our best writers . . . Next to Nature is a hoard of observation, gossip and stories designed to take you through the year, with something rich and strange on every page
The Spectator, Books of the Year 2022
[Ronald Blythe] is an English institution . . . he lives with a deep, authentic sense of wonder
TLS
Some of the most beautiful and precise prose in modern English . . . an expansive exploration of how land­scapes, humans, and words interact, touched with great humanity. . . He is our tribal storyteller, plugged into a common stream of inquisitive conversation that joins us as a species
RICHARD MABEY
One of the great prose stylists on the twentieth century . . . a modern Hazlitt
MARK COCKER
The finest rural historian of our times
Country Life
It would be difficult to find . . . a sensibility which is richer or better fed, more deeply watered and manured, more drenched in Englishness
ADAM NICOLSON
[His] minute observation of places, people and plants, his ear for scraps of dialogue and his feeling for poetry and painting make everything about those days immediate . . . [He has] a deep of love of the place ­- and of humanity
MAGGI HAMBLING
The best portrait of modern rural life in England, subtle and compassionate
ROGER DEAKIN, on Akenfield
The doyen of writers about the natural world in England
MICHAEL McCARTHY
Reading this book is to be in the company of a supremely sensitive observer who has spent a lifetime seeing and scenting nature . . . His writing delights. His wry humour surprises.
Methodist Recorder
An exquisite piece of observation, connection-making and presentation. Blythe is a master craftsman with words . . . Next to Nature is not a book to be rushed, but savoured
Reform

User Reviews

Book 5.0
Narration 4.0
5.0
4.0
A poetic and keenly observed ‘diary’ through a year of Blythe’s life in a Suffolk village, but so much more. He weaves stories and anecdotes from his Friendships, his Christian faith and his deep love and knowledge of literature into his writing.
RichardBavin 05/04/2024

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