Reviewed by Tricia Gilbey
by Ian Collins (John Murray: 2024)
Once, standing next to Ronnie Blythe in Wormingford church, I longed to find the words to begin a conversation. Instead, I shuffled awkwardly and the moment was gone. But now I feel like every single question I might have asked has been answered by this wonderful new biography from his friend Ian Collins, a prize-winning writer to whom Ronnie entrusted this labour of love.
Ronald Blythe, as we found out at his thanksgiving service *, was from an impoverished background, something he tended not to discuss publicly. He was the son of a soldier who’d fought in Gallipoli, and a girl from Drury Lane who delivered to stage doors the ballet shoes her parents made. They moved to Acton where his father was a labourer and a grave digger. His mother read to them from the bible and ‘they both worshipped books’ (p. 57). Ronnie’s early life is recorded in vivid detail and I found the story of how he became the writer we knew fascinating, full of details about growing up in west Suffolk in the 1920s and 1930s.
When he left school, Ronnie faced the familiar tension between getting the life he longed for as a writer, and his need to make a living. After a spell working in a bookshop of sorts, he was forced to join up in World War Two, but his peace-loving nature, strong principles, and perhaps his sexuality too, meant that this was short-lived, and he began work as a librarian in Colchester. From there, via a path lined with lovers and literature, Ronnie was befriended by many of the great and the good of the arts scene, but he always felt like an outcast. ‘He would have a peculiar way of feeling isolated in a particular place while a familiar of its most notable people’ (p. 171). This, however, was good for his writing, and Ronnie’s willingness to volunteer for the tasks others shunned, along with his talent, meant he was able to build a varied and satisfying career. ‘In the hard-won life of Ronald Blythe, the work came before everyone and everything’ (p. 212). His greatest fame came with Akenfield. ‘At the book’s heart lay a Blythe family biography and an autobiography too’ (p. 254). Ronnie was not a journalist, ‘he was an alchemist’, says Collins; Ronnie chose names from gravestones, but the opening voice was that of his father, who, before his death, unburdened himself about his war service to his son .
There is so much more to discover in this book. It brings order and understanding to everything I’d already read, from his ‘time by the sea’, to his life in east Suffolk, and his years in Wormingford, and outlines his major friendships, including his virtual adoption by Christine Nash. Ian gives us more understanding of Ronnie’s relationship with the church too, and writes very movingly about his later years, giving us a real insight into how Ronnie felt at the end of his century of a life well-lived.
コメント