Roland Blythe's Akenfield: Portrait Of An English Village

During the course of this week, I continued by study of Roland Blythe’s(1999) Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village. During the week I examined the opening “oral history” (Abrams, 2009, p.3) of five lifelong Akenfield residents aptly labeled, “the survivors”(Blythe, 1999, p.31) because they had survived both the war and the agricultural norms of their day. This was followed by a survey of religious life in Akenfield through a conversation with six people ranging from the village doctor, and orchard worker, a deacon, and the Rural Dean to name a few. The perspectives brought out through the eyes of each person were compelling, and rich with detail on topics ranging from “farming, education, welfare, class, religion, and indeed life and death”(Blythe, 1999, p.7). In a general sense, the preliminary research for Blythe (1999) began during the authors youth. Akenfield is a fictional community based upon a small village Charsfield in East Anglia, not far from the author’s home in Deback (Blythe, 1999). As noted by the author, “My only real
These include the National Union of Agricultural Workers, the Ministry of Agricultural, Fisheries and Food, the Agricultural Training Centre, and a librarian in Ipswich (Blythe, 1999). The data that was gleaned from a variety of historical and census records is presented at the forefront of his book. Blythe (1999) opens with a description of the population shifts that have occurred from the 1931 to 1961, and the effect of housing development from the fifteenth century through the post war era. In this description, Blythe (1999) utilizes both his own observations and factual data to describe the setting. This information is supplemented by more than fifteen published works ranging from Groves’ (1959) Sharpen the Sickle! The History of the Farm Workers’ Union, to Williams’(1956) The Sociology of an English