Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Ronald Blythe
Oration given on 12 July 2002
Chancellor, the Senate of the University has resolved that the
degree of Doctor of the University be conferred upon RONALD GEORGE BLYTHE.
Ever since we began the business of farming the land, some 600
generations ago, rural systems have undergone continuous change. But it is
in the last two generations, since the middle of the 20th century, that the
pace of this change has greatly accelerated. Modern agriculture has brought
many benefits, increasing world per capita food production by 40% over a
period during which world population doubled. Yet these modern systems have
provoked environmental and social change that we widely lament.
Some 16,000 km of hedgerows were lost per year in the 1980s and 1990s –
yet these very hedgerows seem to define much of the nature of the English
rural landscape. Over the past 50 years, an average of eleven farms have
closed on every single day – yet it is these small family farms that again
have contributed much to the fabric of rural England. Understanding and
documenting these subtle changes remains a vital task for writers, poets and
academics.
Now in his 80th year, Ronald Blythe has lived all his life in East
Anglia. He was educated at St Peter’s and St Gregory’s school in Sudbury. He
became a reference librarian in Colchester for ten years, where he later
founded the Colchester Literary Society. As a young poet and writer, he
worked for Benjamin Britten at the Aldeburgh Festival, also editing a book
for him. Still later, he became Editor of Penguin Classics for more than 20
years.
He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1969, and has
for many years been a Reader for the Church of England for the Essex
villages of Little Horkesley, Great Horkesley and Mount Bures. He has been
honoured with an MA by the University of East Anglia, where he was also a
member of the history faculty, with a Master of Letters of Lambeth, and with
a Doctor of Letters by Anglia Polytechnic University.
It is, of course, for his own writing that Ronnie has achieved a national
and international reputation of the highest standard. He has written poetry,
short stories, novels, history, literary criticism and is a noted essayist.
His first book, A Treasonable Growth, was published in 1960. His work has
been translated and filmed, and has received a number of literary awards. He
has edited work by Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy and Henry James,
he has written about John Clare and William Hazlitt, and has edited poems,
essays and diaries of the Second World War.
It was his 1969 book Akenfield, though, that became an instant and
enduring classic. This is a remarkable portrait of a rather normal Suffolk
village. It is a social history of decline, telling us about a time that has
already gone. You cannot read it without feeling sad that what has
disappeared represented something vital to our culture. The book builds on
the testimony of all types of people in the village – farm workers and
shepherds, the wheelwright and the blacksmith, the policeman and ploughman,
the craftsmen and orchardmen, and as author, Ronnie is witness and recorder
of their hopes and disappointments.
But it is the words of the teacher at the local agricultural training
college that say something important to us today: “the old village people
communed with nature but the youngsters don’t do this… They are great
observers. They will walk and see everything. They didn’t move far so their
eyes are trained to see the fine detail of a small place.” We need this kind
of intimate knowledge of land and nature. Without the care that comes with
such knowledge, it is easy for these resources to be appropriated or harmed
– and for us collectively not to notice.
John Clare is widely acknowledged to be the greatest poet of English
rural life. This year is rather special, as it is the 21st anniversary of
the John Clare Society. Ronnie Blythe has been President of the Society for
all of this time, giving an address at each of the Society’s annual field
visits to Clare’s home village of Helpston. His many talks about Clare are
gathered into a wonderful volume, Talking About John Clare. These offer a
unique contribution to the study of Clare and his traditions, tracing many
qualities that draw readers and writers to Clare. They also show Clare’s
influence on some of our best contemporary poets, particularly Ted Hughes
and Seamus Heaney.
Like all great writers, Ronnie Blythe has been able to start new projects
that continue to capture the imagination of the public. The most recent of
these have been his words from the Essex village of Wormingford. From his
ancient farm, Bottengoms, overlooking the slopes of the Stour Valley, Ronnie
has produced two masterpieces in Word from Wormingford and Out of the
Valley. Originally published weekly in the Church Times, these evoke
memories of the subtle daily and seasonal rhythms that John Clare himself
captured in The Shepherd’s Calendar. Ronnie’s wit and wisdom give deep
insights into village life of the 1990s. He talks of “the living, the
departed, the abundance, the dearth, the planets, the prayers, the holiness
of things”.
You will be pleased to learn that there are many more books to come.
Those in press include the third in the Wormingford series, called
Borderland, another entitled Talking to Neighbours, and yet another about
the Duke of Buckingham called the Papers of the Late Lieutenant.
The Wormingford series are wistfully illustrated by Ronnie’s old friend
and painter, John Nash, and they remind us of an important truth. The
landscape and the idea of the rural idyll are still important to us. Each
year, we make 550 million day-visits to the English countryside, spending
more than £14 billion – more than the gross income earned by farming.
Despite great change, and loss, it is still of deep cultural importance,
interest and significance. As Ronnie says in Word from Wormingford, “the
countryside may be running down but we have to stir ourselves up.” These are
wise words from one of our very best of rural observers and writers.
Chancellor, I present to you RONALD GEORGE BLYTHE
Orator: Professor Jules Pretty