In memoriam
What’s the best way to say goodbye? James Hughes-onslow, our Memorial Service correspondent, has the answer
The best memorials
What sad times we live in. No memorial services and funerals restricted to tiny numbers.
It leaves me, Memorial Service correspondent for The Oldie, in a bit of a pickle, resorting to Zoom funerals for my column.
In these dark times, I return to the best memorial services I’ve attended since I inherited the Oldie job from the late, great Ned Sherrin (1931-2007). And I ponder what are their key elements?
One of my first sombre commissions was to memorialise Sherrin himself, remembered at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, known as the Actors’ Church.
His service contained the most vital element of a memorial service: beautiful words, beautifully spoken.
And what could have been better
than Dame Judi Dench eulogising Ned with the words by Stephen Haggard: ‘For this I hold – friendship is more than life, longer than love and it shall prove warm to the spirit when the body is cold’?
The second crucial element of a memorial service is humour; it allows the immediate grief of a funeral to give way to celebration.
I remember the loud squawking that interrupted the eulogy by Nicholas Coleridge, former Editorial Director of Condé Nast, now Chairman of the V&A, for his late
‘I was midway through her eulogy when her beloved parrot squawked’
Bill Deedes added his own epitaph at his service: ‘There will be refreshments’
boss Ann Barr (1929-2015), deputy editor of Harper’s & Queen. Ann coined the expressions foodies and Sloane Rangers and co-wrote The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982) with Peter York. Her brother rushed to the altar to cover the noisy bird with a blanket and silence it.
‘Yes, I was midway through my eulogy about my great mentor, when her beloved parrot, Turkey, began squawking,’ Coleridge said. ‘From the pulpit, it was impossible to hear the exact words. It sounded like “Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight”, like Long John Silver’s parrot, but perhaps it was “Your copy is late, copy is late”. I ploughed on, but I felt the spirit of Ann Barr very vividly at that moment…’
One of the pleasures of memorial services comes from getting an insider’s view on a person’s professional life.
At St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, former BBC Chairman Lord Grade paid tribute to Tim Bell (1941-2019), Margaret Thatcher’s first spin doctor. Lord Bell is said to have won the 1979 election for her with his slogan ‘Labour Isn’t Working’. Grade said Bell thought this message rather negative but let it go.
‘No one could tell me where the label “spin doctor” originated but my research confirmed he was the very first,’ said Grade. ‘To Tim it was a badge of honour. He was so proud to be the first spin doctor. Many have followed; none has surpassed.’ Eat your heart out, Alastair Campbell!
I like to give some flavour of the gatherings after services, such as the one for Richard Lindley (1936-2019), the Panorama and ITV journalist. The Rev Dr Sam Wells gave a sermon at St Martin’s-inthe-fields, saying,‘there used to be a profession called journalism. One person who spoke the truth was Richard Lindley.’ Later, in a speech at Lindley’s wake at the Reform Club, the BBC’S Andrew Marr corrected him. ‘Journalism is not a profession,’ he said. ‘It is a trade.’
Family members give the most moving – and often the funniest – eulogies.
Rupert Carrington, son of the late Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington (1919-2018), spoke at his father’s service in Westminster Abbey. He told how Harold Macmillan, as Prime Minister, was interrupted by a persistent heckler who kept telling him ‘Your wife is a drunk.’
Macmillan eventually replied, ‘My dear fellow, you should have seen her mother.’ Macmillan’s mother-in-law was the Duchess of Devonshire and his wife was having an affair with Lord Boothby, a good friend of the Kray Twins.
Memorial services also give fine public speakers a chance to shine. One of the best was Julian Fellowes, the writer of Downton Abbey, at the memorial service for John Julius Norwich (1929-2018) at St James’s, Piccadilly.
He recalled JJ asking him what he knew about Carlo Goldoni, the 18th-century playwright. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ Lord Fellowes told him.
Lord Norwich then said he had been asked to give a lecture on Goldoni for Save Venice but he couldn’t do it. He wanted Fellowes to do it for him. ‘You can read, can’t you?’ said JJ. ‘A few weeks later,’ said Fellowes, ‘I am in Venice, giving two lectures on Goldoni, while Emma and I had a blissful ten days at the Monaco.’
Honesty about death also works at memorial services.
The Rev Tim Ditchfield, Chaplain at King’s College Chapel in London, conducted a service for the military historian Sir Michael Howard.
‘Michael booked the chapel 20 years ago “to get in early”,’ said Ditchfield. ‘He told me he wanted a beautiful service and an enjoyable reception. He said, “There is no point in dying otherwise.”’
A memorial service is also a bridge back to a different generation. How lucky I was to attend the service for ‘Dear Bill’ – WF Deedes (1913-2007), war hero, Cabinet Minister and Telegraph editor – at the Guards’ Chapel. Lady Thatcher was there to sing Bill’s praises, as was the then Tory leader, David Cameron.
It is at memorial services like Bill’s that you get the personal details so often forgotten in weighty biographies. Bill’s editor at the Telegraph, Charles Moore, said, ‘He still wore the suits he had owned since the thirties, twice as heavy as modern cloth because they were cut in the days before global warming.’
Only weeks before his death, Bill was telling Telegraph readers his old suits got very hot in modern, heated buildings. Bill added his own epitaph, read out at the memorial service: ‘There will be refreshments.’
Some of the greatest addresses I’ve heard have been at the services for our finest actors – such as Paul Scofield (1922-2008), memorialised at St Margaret’s, Westminster.
Simon Callow said of Scofield, ‘Discovering at an early age that his scholastic gifts were meagre, he fell with inexpressible relief on acting, for which his gift was instantly apparent. Scofield was not a boastful man and not given to hyperbole – so we may believe him when he says that his 13-year-old Juliet was “a sensation”.’
Fine music lifts a great memorial service.
At Scofield’s, hymns included The Lord’s My Shepherd and Now Thank We All Our God. The organist played Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Minor. The choir sang Mannin Veen and The Cloud-capped Towers by Vaughan Williams, and the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. The perfect service. RIP all the greats I’ve memorialised over the years.