Instant post-mortem verdicts

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. In every life there is the subject for a sermon. Perhaps that is why so many sons of the manse have ascended into Fleet Street’s paper pulpits. Indeed, if there is one area of journalism that has progressively improved over the last 20 years it is the obituary notice.

It is the reporter’s craft fused with the scholar’s judicious sense of perspective. The ability of the four quality newspapers to start each day with a fitting judgment on the lives of the departed is an astonishing achievement. Nothing comparable can be found in even the most renowned foreign journals.

During most of the 20th century, the Times was so much the acknowledged master that it was not until the 1980s that its rivals realised they could compete and produce obituaries that read as if they were something more than a Who’s Who entry with adjectives.