The Word from Wormingford

If there is such a thing as a modern sage, then we must surely look no further than the understated pastoral colossus that is Ronald Blythe. Even leaving aside Akenfield, that magnificent hymn to a changing rural land and people-scape, anyone familiar with his wonderful column in the Church Times, Word from Wormingford, will be left bathed in a warm glow of poetry and wisdom.

As much sermon as country diary, Word from Wormingford draws not only on Blythe's immense "book learning" (he was a Reference Librarian at Colchester Library, later editor of Penguin Classics), but, more importantly, on his deep experience and love of people and nature. In fact, it is his ability to see everything as nature, to draw on the "connectedness" of all living things and the places they inhabit that lifts Word from Wormingford into the realm of poetry, and Blythe into the role of Poet-Seer. Almost every sentence is a call to contemplation of the world around us:

"Waiting is a kind of involuntary study. On the station platform, I study the painted iron flowers planted there in 1860. At the bus stop, I study the wild flowers pushing through the lawnmower’s stripes." Church Times, Issue 7549.