Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

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And no wonder, when he seems such wise and genial company, one of those rare souls who understands that "it takes an age to create one's own peerless dust and muddle. 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. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.

Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy. I got “Next to Nature” for Christmas 2022 and started reading through its monthly collections of essays in January. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded their prestigious Benson Medal in 2006. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. 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.

A nature diary, a reflection on changing rural life over the period from the Second World War, and a commentary on a deeply dedicated man of the church. Blythe's observations of nature are as unforced as breathing, and his descriptions are precise, celebratory and unexpected . I seldom read any book for an entire year so Ronnie, as he was known to his many friends, has felt like a companion throughout 2023. 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 . It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance.

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.After the brilliant and much acclaimed "Akenfield", I found this to be a disappointing book having endless and tiresome quotations from literature and the Bible (Mr. 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. a modern Hazlitt -- MARK COCKER The finest rural historian of our times * Country Life * It would be difficult to find . All the charm, wonder, eccentricity and vigour of country life is here in these pages, and told with such engaging directness, detail and colour . From here, Ronald 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.