First, a message to series reader Corwin: Yes, I believe it was you who put me on to the “glowworm” incident which I’ll post on in a day or two. Thank you.
Today is the 43rd anniversary of Churchill’s death at his London home following a stroke two weeks before. He was age 90.
The following is part of the tribute Cambridge historian David Reynolds paid Churchill at the close of his In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War. Churchill’s physician, Lord Charles Moran, is the source of the quote Reynolds used:
Three days lying in state in Westminister Hall, as thousands queued across Lambeth Bridge to pay their respects. The coffin drawn on a gun carriage to St. Paul’s, where the monarch – against all protocol – awaited her subject. And the final journey by rail to Bladon, where, “in a country churchyard, in the stillness of a winter evening, in the presence of his family and a few friends, Winston Churchill was committed to English earth, which in his finest hour he had held inviolate.” (p. 531)
Dammit, that brought tears to my eyes. Unbridled courage always does. So does saying farewell to its possessor.
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