Akenfield

Description

This colourful, perceptive portrayal of English country life reverberates with the voices of the village inhabitants, from the reminiscences of survivors of the Great War evoking days gone by, to the concerns of a younger generation of farm-workers and the fascinating and personal recollections of, among others, the local schoolteacher, doctor, blacksmith, saddler, district nurse and magistrate. Providing insights into farming, education, welfare, class, religion and death, Akenfield forms a unique document of a way of life that has, in many ways, disappeared.

Ronald Blythe has written poetry, short stories, history and literary criticism, much of it reflecting his East Anglian background. He is the author of A Treasonable Growth, The Age of Illusion and The View in Winter and the editor of The Penguin Book of Diaries. His work has been translated and has received a number of literary awards.

A hundred years from now, anyone wanting to know how things were on the land will turn more profitably to Akenfield than to a sheaf of anaemically professional social surveys. * the Guardian *