There are times, not often I admit, when I put the stories, the fiction and the make believe down and pick up something real instead. It might be lyrical landscape writing by Horatio Clare or Robert MacFarland, something more practical and pragmatic by James Rebanks or maybe a memoir or biography. This time it was a Ronald Blythe who caught my eye as I looked along the bookshelves. ‘Time by the sea’ is one of many by this writer who lived and wrote in Suffolk, in particular around Aldeburgh. The last part of the title states the years 1955-1958. These are propitious dates as very many musicians, writers and artists lived and worked in that area and, it was also the very beginning of the Aldeburgh Festival which continues to this day each June in the Snape Maltings. Ronald Blythe, then a very embryonic, struggling journalist and writer, saw it all and fortunately for us chronicled his experiences.
A year or so ago I went to Aldeburgh on a Benjamin Britten tour, a self arranged one! We visited the huge seashell sculpture on the beach made by Maggi Hambling as a tribute to Benjamin Britten, the parish church with the beautiful John Piper window and the graves of Ben, Peter Pears and Imogen Holst. The Red House and museum and then Snape Maltings rounded off the tour. By then I was awash with east Suffolk, the North Sea, the life and music of Benjamin Britten and the writing of Ronald Blythe. This explains why ‘Time by the sea’ resonated so much with me and also made me turn to Akenfield which I hadn’t read for years.
This is social history at its best. It is primary source material and it made Blythe’s literary and historical reputation. This book is a vivid and powerful evocation of a way of life that at the time when it was written had all but disappeared; the late 1960s. Due to the remoteness of much of Suffolk it was probably a decade or so behind much of the rest of the country and Blythe’s collecting and reporting was compassionate and perceptive but definitely real. Writing that paints an accurate picture is valuable and this explains why Akenfield continues to sell and be read and studied today. It is a complete picture of rural life in a tiny village far from everything that was urban. This has been a pleasurable foray into something other than fiction.