Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe

Ian Collins in conversation with Ros Green

Ronald Blythe (1922-2023) lived all his life in East Anglia and is considered one of the greatest writers on the English countryside.

Author of Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe, Ian Collins was a close friend of Blythe’s. Drawing on unparalleled access to letters, notebooks, published works, drafts, and conversations from decades of friendship, he tells the full story of Ronald Blythe for the first time. The result is a sensitive, revelatory portrait which celebrates a fascinating, complex man and casts new light on one of our greatest writers.

This event will take place at the Old Library, Colchester Town Hall, where Blythe worked for 10 years as a reference librarian and where he founded the Colchester Literary Society.

Ian will be in conversation with Essex Book Festival Director, Ros Green, who grew up in Charsfield in East Suffolk in 1960s and 1970s: the inspiration for Ronald Blythes’s Penguin Classic Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village.

The bar in the Old Library will be open for this event. Card payments only.

This event is in partnership with Red Lion Books.

Friday 15th November 2024, 7.00pm

Venue: Colchester Town Hall – Old Library, High Street, Colchester, CO1 1PJ

Tickets: £8 event only or £28 for event and a copy of the book (RRP £26)

Box Office: Red Lion Books
Event only redlionbooks.co.uk/product/blythe-spirit-event/
Event + book redlionbooks.co.uk/product/blythe-spirit-eventwithbook/

Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe by Ian Collins

‘An intimate and insightful portrait of the peerless observer of rural life’
– Richard Mabey

‘Moving, candid, vivid, it is all that we could hope for in a memoir of this unique and treasured writer’
– Rowan Williams

‘As a boy I dreamed of scholars and saints wandering around markets and cornfields, and of artists and poets sitting under the trees.’

Ronald Blythe (1922-2023), author of the inimitable Akenfield, was a prolific and poetic chronicler of rural and spiritual life, nature and literature. He spent a joyful century close to his Suffolk roots, time travelling in his imagination and publishing forty books and thousands of essays. His wide creative network included John and Christine Nash, Cedric Morris, Benjamin Britten, E. M. Forster, Patricia Highsmith and Richard Mabey.

From finding Thomas Hardy in February rain and John Clare in country tracks, to talking to his white cat and reading through a dragonfly’s wings, the Blythe gift was to marvel in the everyday. His writing was intimate, meditative and often laced with a wry humour, inviting readers to share his enchanting perspective on the world. Yet few knew the ‘real’ Ronald Blythe. Leaving school at 14, he educated himself in libraries, churches and walks in the East Anglian landscape. He never spoke about early poverty and traumatic experience in the war, while his sexuality was kept private except from those closest to him.

Drawing on unparalleled access to letters, notebooks, published works, drafts, and conversations from decades of friendship, Ian Collins tells the full story of Ronald Blythe for the first time. The result is a sensitive, revelatory portrait which celebrates a fascinating, complex man and casts new light on one of our greatest writers.

Ronald Blythe’s work, which has won countless awards, includes Akenfield, a Penguin 20th Century Classic and a feature film.

Ian Collins

Ian Collins is a writer and curator. He has written numerous biographies and monographs, including the Runciman Award-winning John Craxton: A Life of Gifts and James Dodds: The Blue Boat which won the Creative Suffolk Author Award. He had a long career as an arts writer for the Eastern Daily Press and has worked with the Aldeburgh Festival, Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, British Museum, Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Benaki Museum in Athens and Meşher Istanbul. He lives in Suffolk and Greece.