The View in Winter

by Ronald Blythe

'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 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.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, British Literature

Paperback

First published October 1, 1979

About the author

Ronald Blythe CBE was one of the UK's greatest living writers. His work, which won countless awards, includes Akenfield (a Penguin 20th-Century Classic and a feature film), Private Words, Field Work, Outsiders: A Book of Garden Friends and numerous other titles. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded their prestigious Benson Medal in 2006. In 2017, he was appointed CBE for services to literature

Reviews

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this writer who is still living at 100 and is a beloved nature writer living in the English countryside. This book is a compilation of interviews of old people born in the late Victorian period who were still alive in 1979 when this book was published. I found it interesting as a social history of the time they were looking back on. Many of the people interviewed were from working class backgrounds, agricultural workers and miners. The working conditions and poverty were appalling. The men who were digging coal by hand for long hours underground inhaling coal dust rarely survived to be 50. Those who lived to old age whose voices are heard here were tough and stoical. The class system of their time cemented them into their working class lives with almost no chance to escape. I was touched by one man who managed to get an education and rise to be a School master because his mother found a local charity fund and fought hard for her son to access education through it.

My grandad was an English immigrant around 1910. He escaped the rigid class system for a better life in Canada. More importantly, he escaped the World War One slaughterhouse that killed so many young men, including his brother-in-law. Without his gutsy decision to immigrate, I might not be here writing this review.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Using the technique that worked so well in his now classic Akenfield, Ronald Blythe creates a unique and tender inquiry into the aging process, allowing his subjects to speak for themselves in intimate, lively, revealing conversations. A View in Winter examines old age as a kind of internal migration our forebears never had to deal with. Only recently in Western culture has the life span of the average person increased from forty to severty years. Blythe interviews a farmer, a miner, a war veteran, an engineer, a schoolteacher, a clergyman, an actor, and many others who openly share with us the special joys and problems of surviving to old age in today's society. The result is a mosaic of portraits, a blending of voices that explore the gift of time, and we are all part of that exploration."
~~back cover

I found this book difficult to read, difficult to get into. Which surprised me, as I adore Akenfield. The book is divided into sections: Winter in the Village; The View from the Starting-Post; The Old People's Home; The Belovbed Holocaust; The Valley; The Class of '09; Getting About; The Vanished References; and Prayer-Route. Each section begins with an exposition on some aspect of aging, and then there are the stories from the lips of the old folks themselves. They're much easier reading than the discourses are, at least they were for me.

I think the book didn't live up to my expectations because it was written in 1979, and was written about a whole generation ago in England, when life was so very different than it is today. It felt more like a book by Thomas Hardy, or Dickens -- dispatches from another time and a different world. And mostly not very relevant to aging today.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book a whole lot more because I enjoyed Ronald Blythe's Akenfield so much. I think if he had limited his lengthy expositions before each chapter of older people reminiscing it would have been a much better book. I couldn't read the entire introduction (36 pages) or the some of the beginning of Chapter 1....I really wanted to hear older people's perspectives of growing older in a small village in England (actually he did not specify the name of the village). Those parts of the book were excellent... Most of these people were not living the life of luxury...but then they talked about how it was back in the day (I guess the early 1900s) and it was even worse than the present time (late 1970s).

Mr. Blythe is is 97 years old at the time of this review.

[Chris B · Rating 3 out of 5]

My maternal grandfather was a Suffolk boy, a farm labourer until WW1. When he came back from the war he found life in Suffolk too dull and poor and he moved to Surrey where his sister lived, becoming a garden labourer at a big house and marrying a maid..
So the parts of this book giving voice to the old people talking about their lives and old age I found very interesting. Blythe's own ruminations less so, and I have to admit that I skipped quite a lot of that

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written account of aging. It is in two parts. The first is a lengthy essay on aging and the second is reflections on aging by a variety of old people who were mostly born in the very late Victorian period. Fascinating and a revealing glimpse of how hard life used to be. A lot of wisdom is contained within this book

[Dei Mur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Llyfr tlws iawn. Dyma leisiau'r olaf a gafwyd eu geni'n oes Fictoria. Mae'n rhoi golwg inni o sut mae'r henoed yn gweld ac yn dygymod a'u byd, yn aml mewn ffyrdd hyfryd ond heb fod yn ôr-sentimental.

A beautiful book. These are the voices of the last Victorians. We get to see how these old folk view and come to terms with their world, often in very charming, but not too over sentimental ways.

[Paul Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written almost fifty years ago, this book effortlessly captures the voices of a range of people in their 70s, 80s and 90s, sharing much wisdom, not only about the challenges of growing old, but of coping with change in a fast moving world. For someone in their mid-50s already feeling bewildered, it gave the book contemporary resonance, despite being rooted in a bygone age.

[Mary Kelly Cardillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book found me and i’m glad it did