Ordinary Time

GMW Wemyss returns us, in this second volume of the fifth narrative instalment of the Village Tales series, to the (sometimes) placid villages of the Woolfonts and the Downlands, the Vale and the sleepy market towns of Beechbourne and of Chickmarsh; to skylark and bustard, sheep and pasture, wood, chalk-stream, steam railway, and pub; and to Wolfdown House, where the peppery duke of Taunton is learning life over again, to the relief of all who know him. This is 2017 in the villages and the country 'round: the General Election, Brexit, terror attacks in London and Manchester ... and a troubling murder in Canon Paddick's native Wolverhampton. Yet all is older than it seems: the immemorial patterns of life and death, of births and baptisms and burials; the eternal verities; the profound continuity of present and deep past. The past informs the present, always; and the calendar of the land and the Kalendar of the Church join in a ceremonious dance. Justice prevails; evil fails; and, though peers and priests, politicians and ploughmen, may pass in time, and saints, scholars, and shepherds alike flourish and are cut down, sheep and songs and standing stones, pigs and parishes, go on forever in the deepest story of changeless Britain. In this, Part Two of the novel, Easter breaks like an ever-new dawn; the immemorial round continues, with marriages and funerals, births and baptisms, shearing and harvest, with the Village Fête and the Village Concert, and grave Remembrance. Passing threats are put down; the past persists in the present; and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well ... so long as one doesn't count The Ashes even on the eve of Advent. Mr Wemyss is an historian, poet, novelist, annotator of Kipling and of Grahame, and beloved West Country essayist. The preceding volumes in this series are Cross and Poppy; Evensong; The Day Thou Gavest; and Ye Little Hills Like Lambs; and the collection, Sermons in Chalk.