Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside
Ronald Blythe
Oct 2022 · John Murray · Narrated by David Holt
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16 hr 6 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
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
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
About the author
Ronald Blythe CBE was one of the UK's greatest living writers. His work, which won countless awards, includes Akenfield (a Penguin 20th-Century Classic and a feature film), Private Words, Field Work, Outsiders: A Book of Garden Friends and numerous other titles. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded their prestigious Benson Medal in 2006. In 2017, he was appointed CBE for services to literature.
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