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Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

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We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual. This book was with me for most of the year that's passed, and I know I'm going to miss those safe and reassuring words of his which may be worth a revisit sometime.

The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. To immerse yourself in this East Anglian year is be reminded of why we love and value the rhythms and realities of rural life. The descriptions of Ronald Blythe's life and his interaction with the natural world results in some astounding pen portraits.

This was a 2022 Christmas present, signed by the centenarian author, now no longer with us, alas, having died in January of this year. Blythe is of course best known for Akenfield, his oral history of a small Suffolk community, and, as someone as deeply rooted in just such a community as Blythe was, the pieces gathered together in Next to Nature have a remarkable immediacy and honesty of experience and expression. It is a selection of Blythe’s regular columns for the Church Times, covering many years and arranged by month.

However these are minor irritations and do not detract too much from what are very rich and perceptive insights. 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 -- Hilary Spurling * The Spectator, Books of the Year 2022 * [Ronald Blythe] is an English institution . The melancholy ever-rolling stream of Time through dark old rooms, the tilting photographs of past incumbents in damp vestries, the melting ice in dank shrubberies, the unwanted (or possibly longed for) companion catching one up in the foggy lane, and history seen as a medieval box of fun holy tricks to poke about in, these were among the experiences of January. The love of nature, the land, the creatures in the surrounding fields and trees meshes seamlessly with an encyclopaedic command of the back story to everything and the rhythms of the country churches. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach.

Reading this book is to be in the company of a supremely sensitive observer who has spent a lifetime seeing and scenting nature . a work to amble through, seasonally, relishing the vivid dashes of colour and the precision and delicacy of the descriptions' THE SPECTATOR'My favourite read of the year . 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 -- Ian Collins * Today Programme * Next to Nature is the perfect memorial, a latter-day Book of Hours . I think Ronald Blythe is a genius in a special, but perhaps overlooked, journalistic genre – the nature notes or country talk columns. I’ve been reading this over Christmas along with Guy Shrubsole’s brilliant new The Lost Rainforests of Britain, and I’ve enjoyed every moment.

Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review. Blythe's observations of nature are as unforced as breathing, and his descriptions are precise, celebratory and unexpected . Occasionally one is lost, bringing mourning as surely as a villager passing on, and truth be told, these aren't the only intrusions of that other, less forgiving time: "in the market town, the stone griffins on the church tower maintain their watch, seeing off goblins and foul fiends. I loved his descriptions of the land, birds, bugs, farm animals, neighbors and friends, weather, his trips and walks, subject matter of his preaching at the various churches, state of the farms by season, church celebrations, etc.I started this in March, and was playing catch-up until October, but really it would have worked much better read month by month; it's only a shame that there isn't quite an entry per day. I got “Next to Nature” for Christmas 2022 and started reading through its monthly collections of essays in January. 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. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literary and was awarded their prestigious Benson Medal in 2006.

I fully realise that these writings were originally written for the Church Times, but I maybe wasn't expecting quite so much of it. Better to have this in hard copy and flip open to some pages every now and then throughout the year.We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. He brings us to his local parish churches as he preaches, reads Scripture, and sings, whether the organist has shown up or not.

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