Diary – 26 July 2008

From London to Bath to Manhattan, ten funerals or memorial services since October makes more than one a month, and attending them can seem a full-time occupation, as well as a sorrowful one. John Biffen, Bill Deedes and Ian Gilmour were full of years and had done the state some service. James Michie and Euan Graham had also reached fourscore years, and Jean Freas, a dear family friend in New York whom my father met at a party there on the night Truman won his dramatic victory in 1948, was almost 80, as was Anthony Blond. At their age death is sad rather than tragic, but too many Fleet Street chums have been clocking out before their time, Nigel Dempster at 65 or Miles Kington at 66. Writing this Diary a couple of years ago, I described reaching 60, and mentioned Hugh Massingberd as a close contemporary. Not quite in the spirit of Sir John Simon (who complained when the Times gave his age as 78 rather than 77 that this was ‘a wounding error’), Hugh gently corrected me: he was younger than me and hadn’t in fact turned 60 at the time.