God Sister Teresa

The Dean of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, the Very Rev Joe Dawes, conducted a beautifully moving service for Margaret Tebbit, wife of former Tory Cabinet Minister Norman Tebbit.

He was assisted at the cathedral in Bury St Edmunds by James Knowles, a lay preacher who often visited Lord and Lady Tebbit in the long years following the 1984 IRA Brighton bomb, when they were both badly injured. Knowles led the prayers.

The Rev Jonathan Aitken gave the first reading from 1 Corinthians: ‘If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels…’ He also gave a eulogy for Lady Tebbit.

As a young Tory backbencher in the 1970s, Aitken used to help Norman Tebbit when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister. Aitken later set up a trust fund for Lady Tebbit when the Brighton bomb left her in a wheelchair.

Socially distancing, the cathedral choir sang The Lord's My Shepherd, I'll Not Want, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Abide with Me and I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes Unto the Hills.

The Tebbits’ younger son, William, gave the second reading, from Paul Simon’s 1970 song Bridge over Troubled Water.

Their older son, John Tebbit, said his generation all knew his mother longer post-brighton than pre-brighton.

He said his mother had to be tough; a remarkable lady she was, he said, an amazing mother who taught them how to cook, to garden – and never to judge a book by its cover.

She treated them all as individuals. As an ex-nurse, she was gifted in the art of rough sympathy.

‘A golden thread running through Margaret’s life was the spirit of the words she used in her acclaimed 1995 broadcast on Desert Island Discs,’ said Aitken. ‘“Whatever happens, you just have to get on with it!”’

In its understated way, ‘just getting on with it’ was Margaret’s mantra of courage.

‘It symbolised the remarkable resilience which she used to cope with the challenges of her life, especially after the Brighton bombing,’ said Aitken.

‘So today let us take some grateful glimpses of the way Margaret “just got on with it”. Always remembering that her strengths were built on the rock of her marriage to Norman and their family life together with John, Alison and William plus their five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.’ JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW