I came very late to Ronald Blythe, not finally reading ‘Akenfield’ until January 2019, when it felt like the most peculiar ‘Modern’ Classic imaginable, rooted as it was in an all but vanished rural past even when originally published in 1969. Indeed it was only on reading of Blythe’s death in January 2022, at the age of one hundred, that I was spurred to read more, starting with the remarkably zestful and truly ‘modern’ feeling ‘The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties’ and then progressing through most of the ‘Words From Wormingford’ collections. All immediately seemed like friends who had been waiting in the wings of life. The books both reflected back elements of myself that I was happy to embrace and suggested avenues which a future self might willingly explore. That these avenues would be populated themselves with suggestions of intriguing pasts outside of previous experience was perhaps as inevitable as it was seductive.

Seductive too was the sense that although Blythe clearly often wrote from very much a personal perspective he was skilled in keeping much of himself hidden. This balance of being simultaneously illuminating and of holding back just enough such that mysteries are kept caged is very difficult to achieve, and as such I approached Ian Collins’ biography with a degree of trepidation. I need not have worried, however, for Collins, a friend of Blythe’s since 1988 (a meeting delightfully outlined in the book’s prologue) seems to inhabit the spirit of his friend throughout the book. This in itself seems almost as remarkable a feat as Blythe’s own writing, such that at times one can half close one’s eyes and believe it to be autobiography. The trick, if one can call it such, is in Collins letting Blythe’s own words take on much of the pulse of the writing. At the end of the book there is a lovely reference to a visiting nurse tumbling bemusedly to the fact that, when necessary, the near hundred year old Blythe (Collins calls him Ronnie throughout the book, as almost all who knew him did) could dress himself with ease, he had come to enjoy the activity of being dressed by others. There is a sense of this throughout ‘Blythe Spirit’, a notion of Collins lovingly dressing Ronnie, of arranging the clothes, combing the hair, presenting everything just so. Not so much to do, after all. Just let the body be. Easy to say, so difficult to achieve, which is the essence of true Artists in any medium.

‘Blythe Spirit’ then is, as its title suggests, a biography more of a soul than one stoked with endless facts. There are those too, of course, many that I knew already, mostly about John and Christine Nash and their artist circles, casting out to the Benton End group, Cedric Morris, Arthur Lett-Haines and so on. Part of my knowledge has been gleaned from a mid-life (at least one hopes it is mid) interest in the kind of mid-20th Century English Art world that my younger self would have found repellently representational and (literally, in many respects) rooted in the English earth. ‘Bloody old hippies’ is what that younger self would have proclaimed, witheringly. That self was an asshole, obviously.

Much too, about Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival, I had come across in Blythe’s ‘Time By The Sea’, and whilst Britten remains something of a musical mystery to me I have at least recently established what I trust will be a Christmas tradition by playing the ‘Ceremony Of Carols’ whilst dressing Christmas trees. Well, it makes a change from The Waitresses, timelessly marvellous as ‘Christmas Rapping’ is. There is certainly space for both.

There are things I had not previously been aware of, however, notably just how much of a Popular Classic ‘Akenfield’ was on its initial publication both in England and the USA, and how that global success reverberated down the decades to still leave traces of influence in the present day and doubtless into the future. Learning that the book had been taught in schools, I wondered then how on earth I could have missed it, before realising that of course it would have been one of those English Things. Like Malcolm Saville’s adventure stories for children, I imagine that ‘Akenfield’ would have received short shrift from educators in the Scotland of my childhood and youth. They may have stopped short of building bonfires of books deemed Not Scottish Enough, but not by far. An exaggeration, of course, but if there is one lingering frustration from a childhood growing up in Ayrshire then it is surely this wildly parochial mistrust of anything English. Not that, in truth, anyone else was to blame for ignorance but myself, and willingness to cast aspersions on The Scottish System is most assuredly a self-defence mechanism. This though is how personal histories roll. Mine, anyway.

The truth too is that had I been exposed to ‘Akenfield’ in school then it is almost a certainty that I should have hated it, this being the default setting of the teenager towards most things forced upon them, particularly at school. I imagine that I should have found ‘Akenfield’ impenetrable and alien. ‘There is no story!’ would have been the most likely response and no amount of teacher coaxing would have made me believe that this may be part of the point. In fact stories are everywhere in ‘Akenfield’, almost to the point of obfuscation. Threads of time and narrative overlay each other to create perplexing patterns of colour, like a fine tweed cascading off a hand pulled loom. Stories are everywhere to the point of being nowhere, their wave forms cancelling each other or amplifying to create crescendoes of quiet. This, indeed, is perhaps the essence of Ronald Blythe’s writing: an almost supernatural ability to tease out threads from multiple points, to craft tangential connectivity between them and to create, ultimately, this astonishing sense of calm. Writing as alchemy.

The supporting cast of characters who populated Ronald Blythe’s life drift in and out of ‘Blythe Spirit’ with the same kind of ease that one gathers they drifted in and out his country cottages, Bottengoms in particular. Certainly Collins makes it seem as such. It feels rather unfair to leave out any of these people, but of particular note is the peculiar appearance of Patricia Highsmith, with whom Blythe had the most naturally odd relationship. The pages in which their, ah, connections are laid bare are some of the most intriguing in the book, with the combination of Blythe and Highsmith seeming to make no sense at all, yet simultaneously all the sense in the world.

Maggi Hambling’s brief appearance meanwhile is a delight, particularly when previously unknown facts are shared with her: “she is astonished by the depths of his early poverty, the lack of formal schooling and the jettisoned peasant burr. Then, after musing in a long silence, in which new pieces are slotting into an old mental image, she says: ‘So, he was a complete invention, like Noël Coward. How amazing.’” How amazing indeed.

Equally wonderful is the way in which Jane Gardam appears towards the end of ‘Blythe Spirit’ and towards the end of Ronnie’s life. It resonates with me I think because Gardam was key to my own drift (back) into fiction in my end of teenage daze when a copy of ‘Bilgewater’ leapt at me from the shelves of an Ayr bookshop. Gardam immediately became something of a brief obsession, as such things that grab our attentions at this age inevitably do, and I devoured her books from the 1970s with relish. She drifted from me, or I from her, or something in between, such that later novels failed to connect in a way that left me saddened. Again though, whether this sadness was about my feelings towards Gardam’s books or towards my own self is unclear. I ought to return to those novels, the ‘Old Filth’ trilogy in particular, to see whether we might have grown into each other. It is Gardam’s exchanges of letters with Blythe which are of interest here, however, with both sides expressing their faith and love with the kind of illuminating strength that only the most gentle of sprits can conjure. Gardam tells of how Blythe’s books of church addresses (‘Talking To The Neighbours’ from 2002 and its prequel ‘The Circling Year’ from the previous year which was in fact dedicated to Gardam) are amongst her regular bedtime reading, resting naturally alongside the gospels and the Common Prayer Book. Blythe in his turn blessed her with what Collins calls a “joy in the present moment – an outgoing buoyancy however the bad incoming news” and the beautiful observation that “There is something satisfying about all things passing, even us.”

This notion of an unflinching faith has perhaps put some off reading Blythe, and Collins notes that his work as a lay preacher and the fact that his ‘Words From Wormingford’ were published in ‘The Church Times’ rather cast a sense in the twenty first century of Blythe as “a Christian writer”. I understand this and would once no doubt have felt a similar mistrust due to ‘religious’ connotations and connections, yet this mistrust would be entirely misplaced and anyway itself informed by the discoloured way in which faith may be portrayed in secular society. Instead, reading Blythe makes one aware, I think, of a simultaneous opaqueness and clarity inherent in faith. I struggle towards this myself, stumbling forwards and backwards in a world that feels ever more discouraging to nature, love and peace. In this struggle Blythe is a constant source of pleasure and balm. His spirit lingers and continues to guide.