Rich soil, fierce suns Edward Candy (Allen Lane ThE Penguin Press Here is a delectable book -a book to linger over and cherish, every pag of which coipels, fresh thought and Iets the reader activels participate in an attempt to under. stand and evaluate the life of ont East Anglian viMlage in the nine teen sixties. Some tender misconceptionr will hardly survive the fresh ai of this windscoured landscape; the townsman's dream of pastoral charm stands little chance againsl the verbal accuracy of the inhabi- tants of " Akenfield" as Ronald Blythe records them. Yet there is a hard core of truth in the old Arcadian idyll; there is a sense in which these villagers, some of whose ancestors have tilled the Suffolk fields since Domesday, can oppose to the slick values of suburbia a stubborn resilience both challenging and salutary. With fine tact Mr. Blythe has drawn from his neighrbours the most poignant accounts of country lives: long lives some of thern, begun in the bitterest poverty. For sixty hours work a lad could earn half a crown when Leonard Thompson was a boy. It must seem that there was war between farmers and their men in those days . . . these employers were famous for their meanness. They took all they could . ... they wore Is out without a thought because, .ith the big famnilies, there was a ;ontinuous supply of labour. Like many another farm workef .his man escaped to the Army, and was valued enough as cannon fodder to be decently fed for the nrst time in his life. " I have these deep lines on my face because I have worked under fierce suns "- and there were times after as well as before the Great War when to work at all, for whatever miser- able pittance, has seemed to men like this an inestimable privilege. The Rural Dean comments on the rigid tidiness of East Anglian fields half a century ago: "A straight furrow was all a man was left with. It was his signature, not only on the field but on life. Yet it seems wrong to me that a man's achieve- ment should be reduced to this." Nowadays the village plough- man sits bigb up on his tractor: " I kept straight as I could but I don't trouble so much these days . . . there is double the arable and few men wanting to stay and work it. so fancy fine ways aren't needed." An 85-year-old horseman speaks: "The farmers were sharp with us. If you couldn't do a job you were reminded that plenth more could . . . I dursn't saj nothing. Today you can be a map with men, but not then." And the District Nurse demolishes another pious retrospective hope: "The old people were not taken care of when they got old they were packed away into corners. I even found them in cupboards." Much gain in dignity and good will, as weU as material well-be- ing; some loss. Easy transport and the poor agricultural wage mean the young men commuting to fac- tory work in Ipswich: television has probably killed the art of story-telling. Wealthy retired people thatch their cottages and keep the craftsman blacksmith busy copying old designs. These newcomers innocently count on the old class sanctities of the coun- try to buy them courtesy and con- sideration: but the villagers remain aloof, indifferent, amused. The young school mistress de- plores the conservatism, the lack of enterprise of village children, and yet what people these same quiet, stolid children grow up to be ! In these pages we meet some fifty of them; orchard foreman, bellringer, gravedigger, pig fanmer, saddler, Chairman of the Bencih- ioble individuals living in their o)wn worlds, linked by a self-effac- ing conmmentary which shapes and rounds off the narratives as the hedges shape and round the rich fields. The farmers are thought to lack feel- ings. I have sometimes put my big foot on a skylark's nest, eggs and all. It is damn awful-it is, you know. '"Clumsy fool brute! Brute!" I teLI myself. But, There used to be a lot of shecr killing of birds and creatures when I was young. The men all did it . .. and there were all the gin traps. The early morning was full of littlc screams-very exciting and strange. What riches What diversity What a book! - < Rich soil, fierce suns - AKENFIELD: Portratlf of an English village BY RONALD BLYTHE