Recently, the Today Programme invited Life Stories in 400 words, for those near the end…

Six inches of water. “Won’t I drown?” We never had baths that deep in the Rectory. My parents and I were staying at the University Arms in Cambridge. I had come for my Voice Trial. I sang Hark the Herald in the Chapel. Still my favourite. Two months later I joined King’s Choir, aged eight. Christmas Eve 1928, Mr Anderson from the BBC recorded Nine Lessons and Carols for the wireless. From 2010 I was the only person still alive from that first broadcast service. Mishal interviewed me for the Today Programme. She was lovely. I kept a photograph of us together on the sofa.

From King’s I went to Marlborough on a clergy bursary. Franc and I shared a study: two Classicists; clergy sons; Christians. I love Franc still. After parsing Greek we argued into the night. He would fight: I could not. Turn the other cheek: what else could He have meant?

Franc chose Oxford. I, King’s, to sing again, where I met my dear, dear Mary: Maths scholar at Girton, all alone from Australia. My family disapproved: a rough colonial! She rode my horse Tiny, seventeen hands two, who grazed in college.

My Tribunal was in autumn 1939. I was given a desk job. With Franc in danger? I couldn’t bear it. My father, still deeply ashamed of my pacifism, marched into the War Office: they agreed the Medical Corps. Mishal interviewed me again, for D-Day. I showed her my only weapon: my yellowed Red Cross armband.

Mary and I married on a weekend’s leave. Franc too. He was killed in action in 1944, his son born posthumously.

I taught Classics at Bryanston and built the Greek Theatre, using Mary’s calculations. We had four children. I was appointed Head of the Choir School back at my dear King’s. Mary and I ran it together. Pupils in their seventies still say we were parents to them: a kind school, ahead of its time.

In 2009 we moved in with my daughter Anne. My dearest, my Mary, my own soul, died. We buried her in a cruel winter. I cried out in my sleep in my grief.

I joined her two years ago, just before lockdown. No funeral. Just four of Anne’s family, at Mary’s grave, singing one of my father’s compositions. Named after me. David.

My grandson Ben wrote a love song: Anthem for Mary and David. They played it on the Today Programme.