Ronald Blythe's career began in 1960 with the publication of A Treasonable Growth, a novel set in Suffolk and reissued in 2010 as a Faber Find. It was followed a year later by a collection of short stories, Immediate Possession, but from The Age of Illusion (1963) much of Blythe's considerable achievement has been non-fiction, most notably Akenfield, his Wormingford diary in the Church Times, his essays on John Clare and his Penguin editions of Hazlitt and Hardy.The publication of Aftermath celebrates Blythe's unique achievement. Over the last 50 years his gentle, eloquent voice has spoken to us of the countryside, and the literature it has inspired, latterly from his farmhouse hidden away down an ancient, rutted track on the Suffolk/Essex border.