The Saturday briefing
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them…
QCan you discover anything about the men of the British Armed Forces who carried Sir Winston Churchill as pallbearers during his funeral? How were they chosen?
aIt came down to a question of height, according to one of the soldiers, Lincoln Perkins, who was 25 at the time. Eight members of the Grenadier Guards were picked for the honour, with the smallest two at the front measuring 6ft, then 6ft 2in, 6ft 3in and 6ft 4in at the back, shouldering the English oak, lead-lined coffin, which weighed a quarter of a ton.
They had rehearsed late at night for weeks in the empty streets of London, unaware of whose coffin they would be carrying until just before Churchill died on January 24, 1965.
The state funeral took place on January 30 and more than a million people came out to see the procession, with his coffin carried on a gun carriage from Westminster Hall, where he lay in state.The bearer party took over at St Paul’s Cathedral and they were later awarded British Empire Medals for their role.
More than 3,000 people attended the funeral service, including five monarchs, and ceremonial pallbearers inside the cathedral, who walked in front of the coffin, included former prime minister Harold Macmillan and Australian prime minister Robert Menzies.
They had been chosen as part of
AN HONOUR: Bearers carrying Churchill’s coffin at St Paul’s. Inset, Johnny Cash performing for prisoners
Operation Hope Not, the code name for the funeral, and planning had begun in 1953 after Churchill had suffered a stroke.
Those picked by Hope Not’s committee to be ceremonial pallbearers had to keep changing because, as Lord Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle, joked at the time Churchill “kept living and the pallbearers kept dying”.
Initially, Churchill had wanted to be cremated and have his ashes buried at Chartwell, in Kent, on his croquet lawn next to his dogs, but instead was buried at St Martin’s Church in Oxfordshire, near his Blenheim Palace birthplace.
QDuring the Johnny Cash concert at San Quentin Prison, a man came on and sang a song, Half As Much. Who was he and can you buy it?
aJohnny Cash was a big fan of performing behind bars and is best remembered for his concert at California’s Folsom Prison in 1968, and the live album which saved his flagging career.
The following year, he performed to inmates at San Quentin, a maximum security prison in San Francisco, where he recorded A Boy Named Sue live.
The other performer you mention was Foster Brooks, who was known back then as America’s favourite drunk thanks to his “loveable lush” comic routines where he pretended to be sozzled. Brooks rarely ever drank in real life but drew on his own struggles with alcohol for his stand-up comedy.
At San Quentin, he also showed off his vocal talents, singing Hank Williams’ song Half As Much. He was also a guest artist at other prison concerts.
QIn the days of steam trains, how did drivers communicate with each other when a heavy train needed a second engine to push it up a steep incline?
aThat process is called banking – when another locomotive was called in to give the train a shove from behind. And it would work smoothly thanks to a system of whistles and the drivers’ years of experience.
Whistles were used to communicate with crew, almost like morse code, with a combination of long, short and crow whistles, which was a fluctuating note.
Britain’s steepest and most famous mainline gradient is the Lickey Incline, south of Birmingham, a two-mile stretch with a gradient of 2.65 per cent, or 1:37.
Banking engines were kept at the bottom of the incline at Bromsgrove shed to call into action, the most famous being Big Bertha. Coming down inclines was an issue, too, in the steam era, when hand brakes had to be applied by shunters, men who ran alongside the moving train, using a special pole to apply them.
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As sweet Polly Oliver lay musing in bed, A sudden strange fancy came into her head.
“Nor father nor mother shall make me false prove,
I’ll ‘list as a soldier, and follow my love.”
So early next morning she softly arose,
And dressed herself up in her dead brother’s clothes. She cut her hair close, and she stained her face brown, And went for a soldier to fair London Town. Then up spoke the sergeant one day at his drill, “Now who’s good for nursing? A captain, he’s ill.”
“I’m ready,” said Polly. To nurse him she’s gone, And finds it’s her true love all wasted and wan. The first week the doctor kept shaking his head, “No nursing, young fellow, can save him,” he said. But when Polly Oliver had nursed him back to life He cried, “You have cherished him as if you were his wife”. O then Polly Oliver, she burst into tears
And told the good doctor her hopes and her fears, And very shortly after, for better or for worse,
The captain took joyfully his pretty soldier nurse.
If you can’t remember the words to a favourite verse or song from yesteryear, send us a snippet and we’ll do our best to find all the words.