Already a best-seller, Ronald Blythe’s close-up of a Suffolk village has, for most readers, justified C. P. Snow’s forecast that it would become a classic of its kind. Only a man born and bred in the country could, one feels, have extracted the confidences and revelations which fill these pages, as an old soldier, a farm labourer, a district nurse, an ex-army officer and other typical figures tell their personal stories. And as they talk the whole village of Akenfield comes suddenly to life.