Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside

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I was rather taken in by a glowing review in The Guardian by Patrick Barkham, whom I rate very highly, and the involvement of Richard Mabey.

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. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. And thus does Ronnie himself become the same as his beloved George Herbert and Thomas Hardy: a companion through the tragedy and beauty of human life and a witness to a world charged with the grandeur of God. 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.

He brings us to his local parish churches as he preaches, reads Scripture, and sings, whether the organist has shown up or not. 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. 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. There is, for example, the quotation from "Wuthering Heights":: "Hearing a climbing rose scratch against the window like Catherine Earnshaw's escape-me-never hand" - all very clever and cultured, but such endless quotations become very annoying, destroying the flow of the narrative. 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 .

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. Hope this book reaches a much wider audience than just readers who might remember Akenfield and those of us who immediately turned to the Word from Wormingford column when the Church Times landed on the door mat. 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.he lives with a deep, authentic sense of wonder * TLS * Some of the most beautiful and precise prose in modern English . For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels. It took me a little time to get used to his writing style and it would have been helpful to have footnotes relating to some of the biblical and literary references. 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.