"To be old is to be part of a huge and ordinary multitude... the reason why old age was venerated in the past was because it was extraordinary." -- Ronald Blythe
Ronald Blythe (born 1922) is an English writer and editor, best known in his native England for his Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (1969), a portrait of agricultural life in Suffolk from the turn of the century to the 1960s. As editor of Penguin Classics for more than 20 years, Blythe has edited modern editions of works by writers such as Thomas Hardy, Henry James and William Hazlitt. He has also prepared a number of compilation, including The Pleasure of Diaries (1989) and Private Words: Letters and Diaries from the Second World War (1993).
"As for the British churchman, he goes to church as he goes to the bathroom, with the minimum of fuss and no explanation if he can help it.""Death used to announce itself in the thick of life but now people drag on so long it sometimes seems that we are reaching the stage when we may have to announce ourselves to death. It is as though one needs a special strength to die, and not a final weakness.""He longed to be lost but he couldn't bear not to be found.""The ordinariness of living to be old is too novel a thing to appreciate."
Blythe was born in Suffolk, England and educated in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was a reference librarian in Colchester for ten years, where he founded the Colchester Literary Society. While a young man, he worked for Benjamin Britten at the Aldeburgh Festival.
Blythe has lived in East Anglia since 1955 when he became a writer full time.He is an Anglican and contributes regular articles to the Church Times.