Akenfield: Ronald Blythe’s Famous Portrait of an English Village

In this rich, rare book, which John Updike called “exquisite”, forty-nine men and women, from a blacksmith and a bellringer to the local vet and a gravedigger, speak to us directly, in honest and evocative monologues, of their works and days in the rural country of Suffolk.

Composed in the late 1960’s Blythe’s volume paints a vivd picture of a community in which the vast changes of the twentieth century are matched by deep continuities of history, tradition, and nature.