In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster in West Sussex, the largest centre of the Carthusians - the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world. 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.
An Infinity of Little Hours : Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order