Death used to announce itself in the thick of life but now people drag on so long it sometimes seems that we are reaching the stage when we may have to announce ourselves to death. It is as though one needs a special strength to die, and not a final weakness.

There were short stories and book reviews and Blythe later prepared a number of anthologies including The Pleasure of Diaries (1989) and Private Words: Letters and Diaries from the Second World War (1993). He never learned to drive and does not use a computer. His book At Helpston is a series of essays on that poet.

He writes a long-running and considerably praised weekly column in the Church Times entitled Word from Wormingford.