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The Morville Hours Hardcover – January 1, 2008

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 216 ratings

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This is a book about time and the garden: all gardens, but also a particular one: that of the Dower House at Morville, where the author arrived in 1988 to make a new garden of her own. Katherine Swift takes the reader on a journey through time, back to the forces which shaped the garden, linking the history of those who lived in the same Shropshire house and tended the same red soil with the stories of those who live and work there today. It is an account which spans thousands of years. But is also the story of one life: of relationships tested to breaking point, of despair and loss as well as joy and achievement. It is a journey through the seasons, but also a journey of self-exploration. It is a book about finding one's place in the world and putting down roots. The Morville Hours takes the form of the medieval Book of Hours, recalling the monastic past of the house. Each chapter is named after one of the Hours of the Divine Office, and summons vividly to life an hour of the day or night in the garden of today and in the gardens of the past, from the crunch of grass underfoot at midnight on a frosty New Year's Eve to the drip of trees in a melancholy March dawn; from a perfumed May Day morning when the whole world seems sixteen again, to the enervating heat of a Midsummer noon; from the bloom of blue-black damsons picked on a golden September afternoon to the smell of holly and ivy cut in the dusk of a cold Christmas Eve. Together they describe the arc of the gardening year, and the arc of a life, from darkness into light, and from light back into darkness once more.
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0747592586
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing; 1st ed. edition (January 1, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780747592587
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0747592587
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.55 x 1.34 x 8.31 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 216 ratings

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Katherine Swift
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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
216 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book has interesting local history and a wonderful story about a garden. They describe it as a nice read with well-crafted prose and poetic writing style. The memoir is described as lovely and well-written, with a lovely soul in the author's writing.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

9 customers mention "History"9 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's history. They find it interesting and well-written, with a wonderful story about a garden. The book is described as a gardening book of the soul and place, part history of the Morville area, part garden redesign, and part memoir of coming to terms. Readers appreciate the storytelling and poetic prose.

"...Part history of the Morville area, part garden redesign, and part memoir of coming to terms with her lopsided upbringing and past relationship with..." Read more

"The Morville Hours is a meditation on gardening, history, one's place and time. It is beautifully written...." Read more

"Nice read, loved the storytelling and the history thrown in." Read more

"...It is beautiful, enchanting, enlivening." Read more

8 customers mention "Readability"8 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's storytelling and well-crafted prose. They find it a nice read with history thrown in. The author has a way with words, and readers appreciate the memoir genre.

"...A glorious pleasure to read, especially for those who love nature and gardening (or just, like me, enjoy reading about it)." Read more

"Nice read, loved the storytelling and the history thrown in." Read more

"As with all great books, this one is about ....everything...." Read more

"...That being said, and not pejoratively, it is a worthwhile read." Read more

5 customers mention "Writing quality"5 positive0 negative

Customers like the writing quality. They say it's beautifully written and that the writer has a lovely soul.

"...and past relationship with her parents, this is a beautifully written account of her days duplicating the different gardens that would have graced..." Read more

"...It is beautifully written. It's not a gardening book but a gardening book of the soul and place...." Read more

"I love to garden and I love good writing...." Read more

"Gardening, history, beautifully written poetic prose ... What more could you want?..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2018
    This is the last of the nature books (WIND IN THE ASH TREE, A SMALL COUNTRY LIVING GOES ON, WILD HARES AND HUMMINGBIRDS, and THE MAGIC APPLE TREE) I bought for summer reading. I enjoyed the latter two, I loved both the Jeanine McMullen memoirs, but I left this for last, and it truly was the icing on the cake. Let me reiterate again that I didn't inherit the Italian gene for gardening; I don't like to work in the dirt, I hate bugs, worms make me queasy, and I hate being out in the sun. But I love reading memoirs of this sort, especially when the author has a way with words as does Swift.

    Basing her memoir on a medieval Book of Hours (a religious work that delegated what prayers and activities should be performed at certain hours in a monastery—Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and, at the end of the day, Compline), Swift recounts her years restoring the Dower House garden at Morville Hall in Shropshire, England. Part history of the Morville area, part garden redesign, and part memoir of coming to terms with her lopsided upbringing and past relationship with her parents, this is a beautifully written account of her days duplicating the different gardens that would have graced the Dower House in different eras of English history: a traditional knot garden, a cloister garden, a turf maze, a wild garden, and more. Her description of the flowers, the plants, the seasons are all exquisite. A glorious pleasure to read, especially for those who love nature and gardening (or just, like me, enjoy reading about it).
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2010
    The Morville Hours is a meditation on gardening, history, one's place and time. It is beautifully written. It's not a gardening book but a gardening book of the soul and place. I love some of her descriptions of breathing the air, and tilling the soil that generations have breathed and tilled. Perhaps we are too solution conscious to stop, stand still, and look at the snow by moonlight. If you like these things, I highly recommend this book to you. I am buying 5 as gifts. I would recommend the following: Clear Mind, Wild HeartThe Elegance of the HedgehogThe Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden][[ASIN:0312427808 The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel
    12 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2015
    Nice read, loved the storytelling and the history thrown in.
  • Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2013
    As with all great books, this one is about ....everything. Katherine Swift weaves the narrative thread offered by the annual cycles of the liturgical "Book of Hours" into a skein of history about her garden, her life, her part of the world. It is beautiful, enchanting, enlivening.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2014
    I can't whether I like it or dislike it. My expectation, being a gardener, was that the book would focus on gardening. I have found that it is an amalgam of autobiography, intense history, the meaning of the sacred hours translated into months and gardening. I am a fast reader, but, this book is so dense, without a common thread, that I am muddling through it. That being said, and not pejoratively, it is a worthwhile read.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2013
    I loved The Morville Hours as an audio book and I have bought it for several friends as hard copy and they have loved it as well: the Hours, the seasons, the garden all combine for the perfect read.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2014
    Swift's book covers history, gardening, autobiography, spiritual disciplines and love of life with well crafted prose. This book is better savoured slowly.
  • Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2014
    This book is a birthday gift for my friend in England.
    Not only did the book come quickly but was in perfect condition.

Top reviews from other countries

  • Alice yarrington Tarrant
    4.0 out of 5 stars Morville the place of my chilhood
    Reviewed in France on January 7, 2019
    In many ways I loved this book, as a child I lived at the lye mill ,and then in morville its self until I got married in 1974. I love my home village ,and beeing a gardener I love your garden. I feel some of stories in your book are very different and the way they told today ,we spent our childhood days looking for treasure in church it was never found and still missing today. Joyce and Dennis I know well my Grandfather A C Walker was building them a new house but I don,t why they moved to Bridgnorth .The very long field on the lefthand silde of the mor was known as the Mill ground because the lye mill race run all the way down the middle of the field.It was a wonderful childhood we use to room Medowlea wood did you thier was a ruined village in the middle where we pink primroses white bluebells,and pear tree.i went Morville School that then was three very large rooms and out side toilets .
    Now I live in France in small village , the country side never be out my blood.
  • Mary Frances
    5.0 out of 5 stars I have browsed through this and enjoyed what I read
    Reviewed in Canada on June 6, 2016
    I have this book and it is one of my favourites, This latest book purchased from you is a gift for friend, so I haven't heard her reaction to it.
    Now we are six was also bought as a gift for a small boy.
    The whole brain child, also a gift as was the Granta publication. I have browsed through this and enjoyed what I read.
    Your request for reviews is rather too quick for me to respond to.
    sorry,
  • Mrs. Peta Nightingale
    5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most beautifully-written and affecting books I have ever read
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2013
    Katherine Swift arrived at the Dower House in Morville, Shropshire, in 1988, and set about creating a garden from scratch that would reflect all the people who had lived there throughout the previous centuries. The book she has written about this process is every bit as beautiful and full of life as the garden she made - it is a thing of intense joy, that I could hardly bear to finish.

    Katherine has set it out in the form of a book of hours, taking us through the structure of the day as written in these liturgical texts, and then spiralling out to encompass the months, the years and the geographical and social history of a place she has clearly come to love. And through it all she has woven a compelling and poignant account of her own family background, the events that shaped her, and the way in which the garden healed her as it took form.

    The writing is sublime, and the richness of description and characterisation (both human, feline and otherwise) draw you deep into her beautiful realm so that coming to the end is a little heartbreaking. Katherine is as adept at the micro as the macro, taking her reader from the glacial formation of the landscape to the interior of a flower with exquisite finesse. The scents and sounds and earthy anchor of her garden are a joy to live with through her eyes and pen.

    I have already given this book to three friends, and there will be many more. Thank you Katherine, for a joyous read.
  • T. F.
    5.0 out of 5 stars The History of a Garden; delight full and moving.
    Reviewed in Canada on March 3, 2017
    A most engaging and moving memoir and an extended reverie on place; the story of the creation of a garden, in the historic tradition of a medieval "Book of Hours" . Full of delightful exegesis into calendars both liturgical, spiritual, organic and seasonal; into place-names & plant-names and many details of historic, geologic, &/or personal events embedded in the landscape and the choices made for the garden.
  • Ms. C. Wetwood
    5.0 out of 5 stars Not just a philosopher-gardener.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2014
    This writer is unusual in that she is not only extremely well-read but uses her knowledge appropriately to highlight her thoughts, of which there are many original ones. She is not trying to sound grand, she is full of wonder and this is the greatest charm of the book - her unbounded delight in everything that grows. So everything she knows and observes is to the glory of all nature around her. Add to this the meticulous nature of a former librarian and you see that she researches everything painstakingly and very thoroughly. Her writing ranges from the informative - Latin names of all the plants quoted - to the beautiful, imaginative and poetic. This is not just another gardener's book. It is a profound description of one person's experience of life.
    One person found this helpful
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