For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels. He makes the authors he loves feel like friends full of wisdom and warmth, kindred spirits through their words. From here, Blythe spent almost half a century observing the slow turn of the agricultural year, the church year and village life in a series of rich, lyrical rural diaries. There is, for example, the quotation from "Wuthering Heights":: "Hearing a climbing rose scratch against the window like Catherine Earnshaw's escape-me-never hand" - all very clever and cultured, but such endless quotations become very annoying, destroying the flow of the narrative. Occasionally one is lost, bringing mourning as surely as a villager passing on, and truth be told, these aren't the only intrusions of that other, less forgiving time: "in the market town, the stone griffins on the church tower maintain their watch, seeing off goblins and foul fiends.

Beginning with the arrival of snow on New Year's Day and ending with Christmas carols sung in the village church, Next to Nature invites us to witness a simple life richly lived. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. John Clare covertly reading in a field crops up more than once, as also Jesus' epitaph for John the Baptist; a little repetition is perhaps inevitable given the structure of the book, though I suspect not solely because of that, given Blythe's occasional admission of parishioners catching him out.

a work to amble through, seasonally, relishing the vivid dashes of colour and the precision and delicacy of the descriptions' THE SPECTATOR'My favourite read of the year . James, Holst, Coleridge are still presences, death notwithstanding, but the fields grow ever emptier of people, the villages more and more separate from their surroundings - something Blythe laments, even while being old enough to be well aware of the privations that came with agricultural life as it used to be. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. He is our tribal storyteller, plugged into a common stream of inquisitive conversation that joins us as a species -- RICHARD MABEY One of the great prose stylists on the twentieth century . an expansive exploration of how land­scapes, humans, and words interact, touched with great humanity.

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the Royal Society of Literature took out a long lease on a white stucco Bayswater house, formerly the home of General Sir Ian Hamilton, leader of the. I fully realise that these writings were originally written for the Church Times, but I maybe wasn't expecting quite so much of it. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual. This book was with me for most of the year that's passed, and I know I'm going to miss those safe and reassuring words of his which may be worth a revisit sometime.I seldom read any book for an entire year so Ronnie, as he was known to his many friends, has felt like a companion throughout 2023. I got “Next to Nature” for Christmas 2022 and started reading through its monthly collections of essays in January. With gentle wit and keen observation Blythe meditates on his life and faith, on literature, art and history, and on our place in the landscape.