THE VALIANT MAN

NEVER SURRENDER. Forty-seven years ago, on 25th January 1965, Sir Winston Churchill, 'The Valiant Man', died at the magnificent age of 90 years. The great man's great funeral of state five days later remains vividly in my memory as a young man as the family watched it all unfold on television throughout the day: the procession of the gun carriage to and from St. Paul's Cathedral; the service itself and the moving entrance of Sir Winston's body into the church accompanied by Croft's setting for the Burial Sentences: I am the resurrection and the life saith the Lord. He who believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. There, gathered before the whole world, in one place at one time, were the presentation of the man, the signs, symbols, sounds and words that, in all their historical grandeur, represented everything that we were, in which we believed and for which we held the deepest affection and loyalty: Our Christian Faith, Freedom and Civilisation; Britain, Mother England, the Union 'Jack', the Mother of All Parliaments, the Royal Navy and Marines, the Army and the RAF, resplendent all, even in mourning. These filled the canvas of the world of which we ourselves were a part; a world, it seemed, that in Churchill's passing, passed with him and, in its celebration of an Empire that made it's last great stand in 'its' Finest Hour' only twenty years before in the Second World War. This is a reflection on that moment and most of all the man whose spirit rests but also beats in the hearts of all those who cherish our civilisation.