Tributes have been paid across the country to a celebrated Suffolk writer, a man who was said to have captured the Suffolk landscape, one that now belongs to years gone by.
Ronald George Blythe CBE became known as one of the finest contemporary writers of the English countryside, with his 1969 novel Akenfield regarded by many as a modern classic.
He died on January 14, aged 100.
Andrew Clarke, former Arts and Culture Editor for the East Anglian Daily Times, had the pleasure of interviewing Blythe several times over the years.
He found Blythe to be a modest, self-effacing man, who nonetheless had a mind “like a steel trap”.
“I always found Ronald to be almost dazzled by the interest in his work,” he said. “It was almost as if he were writing for himself, and was quite surprised that anyone else had read it.
“He didn’t belittle his talent, but he was always surprised that people regarded it so highly.”
Born in the village of Acton on November 6, Blythe was the eldest of six children born to Albert Blythe and Matilda Elkins.
“My family has been here forever,” he told Paul Simon in an interview published in this newspaper in 2010. “I was born in a house in Acton, which has since disappeared and which had its own water supply from a nearby stream.
“I’m partly a poet and saw the effect of two world wars on my family, changes to the education systems and knew a lot about Suffolk.
“I belonged to these people.”
It was from his mother, a nurse, that Blythe inherited his love of literature, describing himself as a “chronic reader”.
Blythe left St Gregory’s school in Sudbury aged 14, and, when the Second World War broke out in 1939, was conscripted into service.
The military life was, however, at odds with Blythe’s gentle nature, and he returned to Suffolk early in his training, working instead as a reference librarian in Colchester library.
It was around this time that Blythe began to meet and form ties with other artists and writers, including the poet James Turner, the writer Adrian Bell and, most importantly, artist Christine Kühlenthal and her husband, John Nash.
Blythe formed a great friendship with the couple, who were champions of his work and encouraged his move to Aldeburgh. The town was home to many creative geniuses of the age, including the composer Benjamin Britten and E M Forster, the author of Howards End, A Room with a View, and Maurice.
In an interview with the BBC, Blythe recalled meeting Forster for the first time.
“I walked into Aldeburgh to get some food after about a week, and when I got back, there was in the letter box a page from a notebook pushed under the door,” he remembered.
“It said, ‘Would you care to come and have a drink with us tonight? E M Forster.’
“If it had been Shakespeare, I couldn’t have been more astounded.”
Blythe published his first novel, A Treasonable Growth, in 1960, and his second The Age of Illusion in 1963.
However, it is for his third novel, Akenfield, that Blythe is best known. The novel takes its name from the old English word for acorn, ‘acen’, and was written from Blythe’s conversations with residents of Charsfield, near Wickham Market.
The novel offered an unsentimental portrait of life in rural Suffolk, stretching from 1880 to 1966.
It was an immediate success and received international praise, with the American director Paul Newman among those vying for film rights.
However, it was the Suffolk-born National Theatre director, Peter Hall, who took the novel from page to screen.
Remaining true to the novel’s Suffolk roots, Hall’s cast was made up of ordinary Charsfield residents, with the filming taking place during weekends, so that the actors could fit their budding acting careers around their day jobs.
The starring role was played by Peggy Cole MBE, a Charsfield resident who became known and loved for her Suffolk good sense and knowledge of local lore.
Mrs Cole became a longstanding columnist for the East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star. Her writings struck a chord with readers, bringing to life memories of a rural Suffolk that was fast disappearing, just as Blythe’s film did.
Almost 15 million people watched Akenfield when it was broadcast on television in 1974.
In 2004, Blythe, Hall, Mrs Cole and 20 others who had taken part returned to the locations used in Charsfield to relive their filming days, and film additional features for the new digital release.
Mr. Clarke accompanied them, and remembers following Blythe and Hall between locations, listening to them reminisce and posing occasional questions.
Later, he discussed the novel’s impact with Blythe.
“He was pleased, but slightly incredulous that what he thought of as a local book had had such a long life and become a cult classic,” Mr Clarke said.
Blythe continued to write throughout his life, with his final book, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside having been published last November, to coincide with his 100th birthday.
His faith, too, was of central importance, with Blythe being appointed a lay canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral in 2003.
By this time, he had become ‘Dr Blythe’, having been become an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 2001.
Blythe was again honored in 2017, when he was awarded a CBE in the late Queen’s birthday honours list.
Speaking to this newspaper at the time, Blythe said that the honour was “amazing”, “marvellous” and “astonishing” - but that he had by no means retired.
“One thing that happens to writers is that they never retire,” he said. “I am always working away.”
Ronald George Blythe died at his home in Wormingford on the Suffolk/Essex border on January 14, 2023.
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