The artistic couple even found him a small house near Aldeburgh and introduced him to Benjamin Britten, who put Blythe to work writing programme material and doing translations for Aldeburgh Festival. A richly detailed guide to parish life in England from medieval to Victorian times, based on a wide range of churchwardens’ accounts and other records. It describes the parish and church our ancestors knew - a world of rood lofts and Easter sepulchres, of Maypoles and Midsummer bonfires, of foundlings and frankincense. With over 300 illustrations.” But alongside this faith, Blythe’s writing dances with self-deprecating wit, rebellious asides, sharp portraits of fellow writers and unexpected notes of worldliness such as this: “On the radio, Evan Davis, Mammon’s angel, is talking to a Mr Warren Buffett, of Oklahoma, who is the world’s second-richest man. Mr Buffett lives in a nondescript house with a nondescript car, and there is no computer in his nondescript office. He likes Evan, with his sweet, crocodile grin.”

In an interview with this paper in the mid-1970s, he said: “When I wrote Akenfield, I had no idea that anything particular was happening, but it was the last days of the old traditional rural life in Britain. And it vanished just as the book came out. A capacious work that contains multitudes . . . a work to amble through, seasonally, relishing the vivid dashes of colour and the precision and delicacy of the descriptions' THE SPECTATOR For many years, Blythe was a lay reader for his local parish, often performing the de facto job of vicar without a stipend. Collins feels Blythe was slightly taken advantage of by the Church of England, despite the Church Times giving him the weekly column that arguably delivered his best work. Mabey, an atheist, admits he has never discussed with Blythe his “quite unselfconscious, unquestioning, sometimes irreverent, and just occasionally pagan-tinged Christian faith”.Although I actually haven't worked this land but I have seen the land ploughed by horses, so I have a feeling and understanding in that respect.” Akenfield, the novel, is a study of what people regarded as a timeless way-of-life, but Ronald could recognise signs of change – although resolutely unsentimental, his book was eulogy for a rural idyll that had lasted for nearly two thousand years.

Speaking to me later over lunch, Blythe expanded on the theme: “Akenfield is about the Suffolk people, it's about growing up, about moving away, about staying at home, about the countryside - it's about the generations. It's about us as Suffolk people. An indication of just how prescient Ronald had been was demonstrated in 2004 when he met Sir Peter Hall and Akenfield cast members Peggy Cole and Garrow Shand at Hoo Church to shoot extras for the DVD release of the film. A capacious work that contains multitudes…a work to amble through, seasonally, relishing the vivid dashes of colour and the precision and delicacy of the descriptions’ – The Spectator Collins Bird Guide by Lars Svensson and Peter J Grant, illustrations by Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterström (HarperCollins, 1999) For all the brilliance of his memory a decade ago, he has now been diagnosed with dementia. “He lives in a kind of dream world and he’s probably still writing books in his head,” Collins says. “He’s so fortunate to have this amazing physical strength. He’s never taken any medication apart from a bit of sherry. He caught Covid on his 98th birthday. A short course of antibiotics just sent him into space.”Blythe has long championed the poet John Clare, and there are similarities, as Olivia Laing observes, in Blythe’s “attentive and unsentimental” view of the countryside. When he writes about “gaudy” fields of borage, Blythe knows how it is harvested and where it will be sold. “A very Clare-like knowledge, this, obtained by the steady, perpetual listening that gave Akenfield its power,” Laing writes.