Tuesday 17th March, 2020:

This man died yesterday. He was born on the eve of the Russian revolution and lived through the Great Depression, World War Two, the Cold War, the rise and fall of communism, the Troubles, the war on terror and 20 Prime Ministers. He was the last surviving chorister in the first ever broadcast of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge, in 1928. As a progressive headmaster for nearly two decades he turned one of the country's most established boys’ schools co-ed and abolished corporal punishment well ahead of his time. Despite being a conscientious objector he insisted on serving as a medic alongside his brothers on the front lines, and was very nearly court-martialled and shot for refusing to bear arms against his fellow man. He was at Dunkirk and D-Day, and helped set up a field hospital where he also founded a choir to entertain injured soldiers. The British Army granted him some funds to buy music for this choir, and when the war ended and he asked his superiors what to do with the music he was told to keep it. As he lay in his deathbed I had the privilege of joining a few friends and family in singing to him from those very same copies that he had acquired 75 years previously, and which he had himself used to bring a little joy to those who had needed it as they lay confined to their beds. Grandfather, may you rest in peace and rise in glory. (And no, it wasn't bloody coronanonsense.)