The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden | Paperback

Someone gave me The Morville Hours for my 50th birthday, thinking it would give me some "peaceful reading", knowing how much heavy stuff is on my plate at the mo.  It is a beautiful book in more ways than one.  For bibliophiles who derive pleasure from simply handling a nice book made with good paper and an eye for detail, it's a perfect gift, maybe even a collector's item of the future as a First Edition. It is an excellent choice of gift for anyone who appreciates the beauty of the medieval illumination, gardens and history.

The Morville Hours describes how the journalist and broadcaster, Katherine Swift, came to create her well-known garden at Bridgnorth.  She has also researched the history of the house and the nearby Church and its incumbents. There is a wealth of interesting detail and glimpses into the spiritual as well as routine tasks of ecclesiatical life as represented by traditional Books of Hours. She has woven it with a very personal story of her own family and that gives a bitter-sweet poignancy to an unique book, but I won't spoil it by telling you why. 
 
The shape and size of the book, its illustrations and its type-setting is also very pleasing. It is neat, but thick, so it satisfies in many ways ; at the back of the book there is a careful description of the typeface ; Linotype Stempel Garamond, which just happens to be a version of my own current favourite font of choice and a little history of its 15th century designer, Claude Garamond.  It's a little more detail than usual.  One never knows when that info might come in handy at a quiz...

The dustjacket is illustrated in the style of a typical Book of Hours, with the half-circle in lapis blue and gold at the top and on the front, a painting in perspective of the house and garden in neat symmetry in Summer on the front and in Winter on the back. It's a book you don't want to race through; you want to savour every perfect detail from its thoughtful writing to its careful design.  It must be a labour of love; Katherine Swift used to be Keeper of Rare Books in Dublin and Oxford and it shows.

This is a true gem of a book. I stumbled onto this book quite by accident and love everything about it even though I am not a religious (but definitely spiritual) person. I intend to read this again and again over the years as it remains timeless even though it is full of historical and family detail. I savour each chapter and even love the smell of the pages! It is the kind of book you can just dip into at any time and read a chapter appropriate for a time of year or day. VERY WELL recommended.