'The View in Winter' is a timeless and moving study of the perplexities of living to a great age, as related by a wide range of men and women: miners, villagers, doctors, teachers, craftsmen, soldiers, priests, the widowed and long-retired. Their voices are set in the context of what literature, art, religion and medicine over the centuries have said about ageing. The result is an acclaimed and compelling reflection on an inevitable aspect of our human experience.

An illustrated collection of the author's regular weekly column on the back page of the Church Times, where, with a poet's eye, he observes the comings and goings of the rural world he sees from his ancient farmhouse in Constable country.

Open the ancient door of an old church, says Ronald Blythe, and framed in the silence is a house of words where everything has been said: centuries of birth, marriage and death words, gossip, poetry, philosophy, rant, eloquence, learning, nonsense, the language of hymn writers and Bible translators - all of it spoken in one place. This work contains words spoken by Ronald Blythe in the churches he serves as a Reader in the Church of England, and as the local writer expected to add his own distinctive voice. Originating as addresses given at Matins or Evensong, they follow various paths into...

fresh and eager...rich in character...so infectiously alive to the simple pleasures that even now the senses quicken to read it.' Jan Morris in The Times ...a brilliant picture of traditional English rural society ... (Parson Woodforde) is now among the most unforgettable characters of English literature.' Ronald Blythe in the Introduction The world in which Parson Woodforde lived was tumultuous to say the least. Yet while the French Revolution and the American War of Independence shook and changed the world, this kindly country prieSt fills the pages. of his diary with the ordinariness of...