Listener and watcher ...

... A life in writing: Ronald Blythe | Culture | The Guardian. (Hat tip Dave Lull.)

Blythe had no idea Akenfield would have the impact it did. Fifteen million people watched Peter Hall's film of the book, shown simultaneously on TV and in the cinema, in which Blythe had a cameo as a vicar. His portrait of village life captured a hitherto barely noticed revolution in the countryside: Akenfield marked the end of an essentially feudal pattern of farming by hand and horse that had endured for millennia. Within the lifetimes of the people he wrote about, physical hardship, poverty, deference and communities centred on the land and the church had been pushed aside by the juggernaut of industrial farming.