Ronald Blythe recorded the passing, and continuance, of rural life

He had not expected his book to be such a success. It had been acclaimed not only in Britain but also in America, where he had never dreamed of going. All Ronald Blythe had thought about, as he sploshed through the muddy fields of east Suffolk and the ditches running with yellow winter water, was the deep obscurity of the lives of rural labourers. They had dug those ditches and laid those hedges, twisting the reluctant twigs of elder and willow. Now the hedges had grown unruly, despite their efforts. They had ploughed their identity, their “I am”, into the flat, clayey fields, and had then gone under that clay. Their names had been carved on headstones, but the Suffolk wind, which cared for no one, had weathered them away. Perhaps he, as a writer, could nonetheless record the voices of country folk still living.