And Another Thing | 3 May 2008

When the corridors of power echo to the strains of ‘Nil nisi bunkum’

When did the newfangled service for a dead nob first come in — the one that says it is a ‘celebration’ of the life, rather than a lament for the death? I would like to read a learned survey of the subject. When I was a boy in the Thirties, all centred on the funeral, which was a solemn, often grand affair. People counted the number of cars, or carriages, which followed the hearse, and spoke of ‘a forty-carriage do’. Everyone wore mourning black suits, black ankle-length dresses, hats and veils. Sometimes as many as a thousand mourners trudged behind the coffin to the cemetery. As the cortège approached, everyone on the pavements stood still. Men took off their hats (everyone wore hats or caps then), and women bent their heads, or even curtsied. In those times, fashionable TV dons did not preach the scientific-atheist doctrine that a human life has no more significance than a chunk of rock, or a puddle of water.