To be old is to be part of a huge and ordinary multitude... the reason why old age was venerated in the past was because it was extraordinary.

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.