{"product_id":"evensong-9781474614238","title":"Evensong","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eParish churches have been at the heart of communities for more than a thousand years. But now, fewer than two in one hundred people regularly attend services in an Anglican church, and many have never been inside one. Since the idea of ''church'' is its people, the buildings are becoming husks - staples of our landscapes, but without meaning or purpose. Some churches are finding vigorous community roles with which to carry on, but the institutional decline is widely seen as terminal.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet for Richard Morris, post-war parsonages were the happy backdrop of his childhood. In \u003ci\u003eEvensong\u003c\/i\u003e he searches for what it was that drew his father and hundreds like him towards ordination as they came home from war in 1945. Along the way we meet all kinds of people - archbishops, chaplains, campaigners, bell-ringers, bureaucrats, archaeologists, gravediggers, architects, scroungers - and follow some of them to dark places.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart personal odyssey, part lyrical history, \u003ci\u003eEvensong\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt its best when reminding us how deeply embedded these buildings are in the English landscape and when exploring, how the intimate meanings they have held can be rediscovered . . .  \u003cb\u003eAt the book's heart is the question of the place of faith in the modern world\u003c\/b\u003e . . . \u003cb\u003ea warm, thoughtful and generous-spirited book\u003c\/b\u003e with a profound sense of the importance of traditional spiritual devotions in the modern world. * Catholic Herald *\u003cbr\u003eIt can sometimes be regarded as an institution out of time but, as this \u003cb\u003eintimate, idiosyncratic \u003c\/b\u003eaccount notes, the Church of England continues to influence public life and private morality well into the 21st century. Centred around a series of reminiscences of the author's relationship with the church's practices, places and people,\u003cb\u003e the book also has much to say about issues of community and identity.\u003c\/b\u003e * BBC History *\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eEvensong, \u003c\/i\u003eRichard Morris, whose father was himself a parish priest, considers the history and current fragile state of the Church of England * Choice *\u003cbr\u003eThis memoir pulls off a difficult task . . . the story that it tells is a very human story of a father and son, a vicar and an archaeologist - and \u003cb\u003ea compelling story it is\u003c\/b\u003e . . . Richard Morris avoids nostalgia, and, as one would expect from an archaeologist, \u003cb\u003esets out a layered story of the different people and places whose character is vividly drawn here \u003c\/b\u003e. . . On one level, it is a celebration of the parish; on another, it is a ringing affirmation of the importance of our church buildings * Church Times *\u003cbr\u003eAn exploration of the current state of the Church of England amid messy legacies of colonialism and Empire * The Tablet *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eExtraordinary \u003c\/b\u003e. . . Again and again he picks something  up and it causes his mind to roam in a  new direction, so the number of  subjects covered, from steam engines  to an unsolved murder in Zimbabwe,  is impossible to list or put into any  real order . . . \u003cb\u003eMorris delves archaeologically deep  into the foundations of Christian belief  in England\u003c\/b\u003e and explains the survival  into today of ideas and rhythms that  are almost impossibly old. * Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday *\u003cbr\u003eA song of praise  to England's  vanishing  Church . . . \u003ci\u003eEvensong \u003c\/i\u003eis an apt title for  this \u003cb\u003ebeautifully written  and moving meditation  on the history and  current state of the  Church of England . . . \u003c\/b\u003eMorris is a man of extraordinary  learning . . . The result is something  \u003cb\u003eextraordinarily rich\u003c\/b\u003e, which  interweaves past and present and  illuminates many aspects of post-war  Britain, including shifting class  relations, housing and industrial  policy, and the cultural tensions  between conservationists and  gung-ho modernisers - the latter  especially important for the Church,  which was torn between the two . . . \u003cb\u003ewonderful\u003c\/b\u003e * The Sunday Telegraph *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePacked with quirky historical diversion\u003c\/b\u003e . . . he writes \u003cb\u003ebeautifully \u003c\/b\u003eabout his parents and allows their love letters, which he discovered after his father's death, to speak largely for themselves . . . There are informative detours about bell-ringing and bell-casting, organ-building and choirs, 16th-century burial practices and a long account of Morris's involvement in a dig at Kellington, North Yorkshire, where 30 years ago the church had to be saved from subsidence caused by coal-mining . . . there is \u003cb\u003ean elegiac decency to this book. In its restrained, courtly way it reminds us of the Christian context to British life that we are losing with each ahistorical shrug from our leaders\u003c\/b\u003e * The Times *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEclectic, discursive, and multi-layered\u003c\/b\u003e (as befits an archaeologist). Reading it is like sitting by the fire, listening to a skilled raconteur pouring out an endless stream of anecdotes . . . You could describe this \u003cb\u003ewonderfully serendipitous\u003c\/b\u003e book as\u003cb\u003e an absorbing account of the history of archaeology\u003c\/b\u003e from somebody who has played (and continues to play) an influential part - but it is so much more * Current Archaeology *\u003cbr\u003eWith warm sentiment but no sentimentality, he communicates the ties of love that bound his family together  . . . \u003cb\u003e[\u003ci\u003eEvensong\u003c\/i\u003e] is like an archaeologist's diagnostic slice or test pit, exposing human history\u003c\/b\u003e . . . Morris's narration of the wonders of Marloes, St Brides and the Pembrokeshire coast makes a moment of shared historical experience. But the greater pleasure of the book comes from its meta-narrative: if it is fair to say that the author is haunted by the past, then it must be added that the ghosts than haunt him are not fearsome but friendly -- Cally Hammond * TLS *\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orion Publishing Co","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48885796110679,"sku":"9781474614238","price":999.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781474614238.jpg?v=1722537725","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/evensong-9781474614238","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}