On the eve of a landmark birthday, one of Ronald Blythe's publishers had the opportunity to ask him a few questions...

You started writing in the 1950’s, with the release of your first book, A Treasonable Growth, and Divine Landscapes, which was reissued earlier this year. What has inspired you to keep writing for so many years?

 

I have lived in East Anglia

 all my life and my work is must influenced by its landscape and ‘spirit’. I became a full-time writer in 1956, when I lived at Aldeburgh and assisted at the Festival. I edited The Aldeburgh Anthology for Benjamin Britten.

 

Canterbury Press has just re-published your ‘Wormingford’ series, Can you tell us a little about Wormingford and why you started writing these?

  

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I began writing my journal ‘Word from Wormingford’ in the Church Times about fifteen years ago and the fifth volume, River Diary*  will be published by Canterbury press next spring. The journal is centred on a Stour Valley village on the Suffolk-Essex border, which I have known since I was 23, chiefly through my friendship with the artist John Nash and his circle. I wrote a study of the Nash brothers called First Friends which has recently become the basis of Pat Barker’s novel.

 

Do you feel that the works you have written are a chronicle your life in any shape or form?

 

Yes, my work does indeed chronicle my life to some extent and it follows a classic English tradition - and has been popular in the USA, maybe because of this.

 

Your book, Akenfield is now in the Penguin 20^th Century Classics series alongside Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Nineteen Eighty-Four, can you tell us a little about it?

 

In 1966 I lived near Woodbridge whose countryside provided the people in Akenfield. Akenfield is an autobiographical study of farming in England during the years 1888-1966. It was followed by a study of old age, The View in Winter.

 

What do you most enjoy reading these days?

My favourite reading of late has included Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music and Imogen Holst’s A Life in Music.

 

Do you think you will ever retire?

Artists and writers are fortunate- they don’t retire! I am president of the John Clare Society, the Kilvert Society and the Robert Bloomfield Society, and vice-president of the Hazlitt Society. So- a busy life!

 

*River Diary is now published and includes a charming description of Ronald Blythe’s first visit to Stoke Charity in 2007.