Madam Deputy Speaker,
“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room.”
So preached Henry Scott Holland, Regius Professor of Divinity, at St Paul’s Cathedral in May 1910, following the death of Edward VII, whose body lay in Westminster Hall—the first monarch ever to lie in state in this Palace. I always railed against those words when I was a curate conducting funerals in High Wycombe, because I found them too lazy, too immediately, conveniently consoling. I preferred the brutal truth of Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer:
“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live…In the midst of life we are in death”.
That seemed, and still seems, more honest. In the setting by Purcell for Queen Mary’s funeral in 1695, those words of Cranmer’s appear so stark, so bleak, so pared down. They seem to render a general truth about life.
Some suggest, unthinkingly perhaps, that there is less to grieve about after a long life—more than threescore years and ten. I disagree profoundly. Yes, 99 years is a long time, but even that feels short when your other half is gone. Such was Prince Philip’s vigorous embrace of life, both in fighting Nazism and after he had faced several life-threatening conditions, that I suspect he perhaps had more time for the words of Dylan Thomas:
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day”.
I have no great anecdotes about Prince Philip. I never did the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award—I am feeling rather left out. I did dance the Highland fling for him in Stirling Castle when I was very young, and he teased me relentlessly when he came to Treorchy in 2002. Some have their memorials in stone, in works of art, or in great literature they have written. No doubt there will be similar memorials to Prince Philip: after all, there are already thousands of plaques all over this nation and the Commonwealth that bear his name. He even gave the Rhondda borough council its royal charter in 1955, and went down Fernhill colliery afterwards—rather bravely, in a white coat. Others have spoken of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which is a phenomenal achievement, but perhaps we should determine to invest far more in our youth services, especially in our most deprived communities, as a further legacy to him.
However, Prince Philip’s greatest memorial is a relationship: a single, singular, special royal relationship spanning decades, its every twist and turn played out in public. Few of us can genuinely imagine what studied torment that involved: to fall in love in public, to marry in public, to row in public, and to grieve in public; to have every glance and gesture viewed and reviewed by millions, and then played out in some television drama. To keep one’s counsel, year after year, in such circumstances is to lay down one’s life in the line of duty.
I do not know what he would have made of today. He would have probably said, “What a load of nonsense. Shut up, man.” He did not care for sycophancy, and I
am not sure that he was all that much of a fan of people wearing their hearts on their sleeves. However, there is perhaps one consolation at moments such as these: the words of Scott Holland again, from 1910:
“the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.”
I, like so many others today and many thousands in my constituency in the Rhondda, wish Her Majesty every consolation. Whatever they were to each other, that they are still: a fixed point in an ever-changing world.
5.54 pm