Akenfield author 'left lasting legacy' in Suffolk village

The Cranbrook family of Great Glemham were friends of the writer, who died at his home at Bottengoms Farm, Wormingford, near Colchester, on January 14 at the age of 100. The home was left to him by his great friends, artists John and Christine Nash.

He wrote 33 books - but his masterwork is considered to be his depiction of village life in Akenfield, which was published in 1969 and made into a celebrated film by director Sir Peter Hall.

"It was based on conversations with men and women in the Suffolk countryside, describing the last days of the old traditional rural life in Britain and which was on the edge of disappearing," explained Lady Caroline Cranbrook.

The writer lived in Great Glemham in the 1960s and 70s in a house next to what was the village shop.

"He was writing at a watershed moment for agriculture and the countryside. Luckily for us he had the genius of bringing alive the old traditions, practices and stories through the words of Suffolk villagers, farmers, farm workers and their wives," she said.

"He recorded the good times and the bad – and a way of life that today has more or less vanished."

As a young man he worked for composer Benjamin Britten and lived in Aldeburgh where he edited the Aldeburgh Festival programmes.

It was through this connection that he became a friend of the Cranbrook family and came to live in Great Glemham, opposite the church were he served as a churchwarden.

"The church was always important to him and he was a Lay Canon at St Edmundsbury Cathedral," she said.

He was born at Acton near Lavenham - the eldest of six children - and was descended from generations of farm workers.

He was largely self-taught, having left school at 14. But he described himself as a watcher, a reader and a listener with agriculture in his blood.

"This is a very accurate description which his many books and articles demonstrate," said Lady Cranbrook.

"Akenfield was based on his conversations with men and women in the Suffolk countryside, describing the last days of the old traditional rural life in Britain and which was on the edge of disappearing," she said.

"He was writing at a watershed moment for agriculture and the countryside. Luckily for us he had the genius of bringing alive the old traditions, practices and stories through the words of Suffolk villagers, farmers, farm workers and their wives. He recorded the good times and the bad – and a way of life that today has more or less vanished.

"While he was working for the Aldeburgh Festival he lived nearby but later moved to Great Glemham and much of Akenfield relates to this village."

Ploughman Anthony Heffer was the inspiration for his Akenfield character Derek and the chief magistrate in the fiction was based on Lady Cranbrook's mother-in-law Fidelity Countess of Cranbrook, who talks vividly about the work of the local magistrates’ court which she chaired.

Lady Cranbrook's son, Jason Gathorne-Hardy, described the late author as a "national treasure".

"In his passing, we have lost a great writer," he said. He used words thoughtfully and carefully - mindful of their weight and shape and meaning, he said.

Akenfield was a "remarkable chronicle of rural life in the late 1960s/early 1970s", he added.

"In the Suffolk countryside it was a time when Phantom jets roared overhead, combine harvesters had unbelievably large 12ft headers and the biggest tractor on the land was a four-wheel drive Ford County.

"It was also a time of great change. Village life and farming practices, which were historically intertwined, were becoming disentangled.

"New ways of working the land were continuing to come in and make their effects felt. Families were becoming smaller and more children were moving away to find work and start families of their own."

Although as a fictional creation Akenfield cannot be found on any map of Suffolk, its inhabitants were "very real", he added.

"Their testimonies were based on interviews with real people whose names were changed. This has left many villages in East Suffolk feeling that they have a direct, personal connection to the book."

Although based on a small place, its themes appealed to a global audience, he explained.

"My most dramatic experience of this took place at a community-based IT conference in Sarawak in the Heart of Borneo.

"I was working as the international patron of a locally owned food festival and had taken a copy of Akenfield as a gift to friends who ran a homestay. Another guest was a sociologist from Vancouver in Canada, who picked up the copy of Akenfield fondly and explained that it had been a course book during his undergraduate studies."

His works had been a "source of profound inspiration" in his own life, he said, including Fieldwork, which refers to the former practice of prescribing landscape as a tonic for recovery from physical or mental ill health.

"Implicit in his writing was the suggestion that the natural world and rural landscapes can heal us. I can only agree," he said.

"He very kindly wrote a foreword for An Artist in the Garden, a book I wrote with the painter Tessa Newcomb, published by Full Circle Editions."

His work also prompted Jason to start a literary residency, Writing at Great Glemham, at my farm to support rural writing. It has welcomed more than 30 writers to Great Glemham over the past eight years.

Ronald Blythe’s writing even led to the creation of The Akenfield Chair - a large Suffolk Ball Back armchair which conceals a drawer in its seat designed to house an early hardback version of Akenfield, said Jason.

The chairs are still made to order at Great Glemham by Suffolk millwright Tim Whiting. Jason said one of his most treasured memories was delivering one to the author as a gift.

"In Ronald Blythe’s passing, we have lost a great man. But through him we have gained so much as well," he said.

Jason's brother, Argus Gathorne-Hardy, said the author - known to the family as Ronnie - was "incredibly generous" to him as a young art history student.

"He was every inch the Suffolk man. What is more, whether it is Easton or Glemham or Charsfield or Wormingford, each of these villages where he lived claim him as their own in the proud recollections from his passing.

"At the time I had only just read Akenfield, enjoying it mostly for our own Glemhamites - rereading it now I marvel at the stories, some charming, some sad but all with a constant thread, capturing the quiet voice of a disappearing way of life."

Lady Cranbrook said as an author, Ronald Blythe helped us to "understand and appreciate the evolution and beauty of our towns and villages, our landscape, our farmland, our buildings, our history and our past".

"He has preserved our knowledge of a rich way of life and rural culture that otherwise would have disappeared forever. This knowledge is his legacy to Suffolk and to everyone who lives there," she said.

"He was an amazing man – modest and unassuming but so thoughtful, inspired and hard-working. A true hero for Suffolk."