In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster in West Sussex, the largest centre of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey into a society virtually unchanged in its behaviour and lifestyle since its foundations in 1084. An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now. It is also a drama of the men's struggle as they avoid the 1960s - the decade of hedonism, music, fashion and amorality - and enter an entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own making. After five years each must face a choice: to make "solemn profession" and never leave Parkminster; or to turn his back on his life's ambition to find God in solitude. A remarkable investigative work, the book combines first-hand testimony with unique source material to describe the Carthusian life. And in the final chapter, which recounts a reunion forty years after the events described elsewhere in the book, Nancy Klein Maguire reveals which of the five succeeded in their quest, and which did not. "Maguire has produced a vivid, gripping and deeply touching picture of a world that is now lost.

For an outsider to enter such a closed society and to capture its essence is an astonishing achievement: this is a work of history, but it has all the best qualities of a psychological novel.".