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| + | == From the Observer archive, 31 January 1965 Winston Churchil == | ||
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| + | <div id="article-body-blocks"> ,lululemon<p>The procession took that most ancient road that runs from the Palace of Westminster to the steps of the cathedral of St Paul. It is a road that half the history of England seems to have taken, on its way to a crowning or to a public and ignoble death, to murder or be murdered, to raise revolt, to seek a fortune, or to be buried,North Wales Northam,lululemon outlet. The route was lined with young soldiers, their heads bowed over their automatic rifles in ceremonious grief. The bands played old and slow tunes. The drums were draped in black. The staffs of the drum-majors were veiled. They moved slowly, steadily, at a curiously inexorable pace, and it looked as if nothing could ever stop them,the draft versions. The great crowd watched with an eloquent and absolute silence.</p><p>It was beautiful in the way that great works of art are beautiful. It obeyed secret rules. There was the Earl Marshal walking alone and worried in the centre of a great space, like any man lost in a high street,Cheap Nike Air Max 90, but carrying a gilded sceptre. There was Lord Mountbatten pacing behind the chiefs of staff carefully manipulating his sword and, like any trooper, trying to keep pace with the band. There were officers with their trays of Sir 's medals, held out like ware for sale. There were the heraldic banners of the Cinque Ports and the Spencer-Churchills, too stiff to wave in any wind, carried like trophies before the coffin. There was the family looking lost and human and trying to keep up.</p><span class="inline embed embed-media"><iframe frameborder="0" width="460" height="369" src="/embed/video/x87gy1"></iframe><br /> <span class="caption"> </span></span><p>But the central, the overwhelming fact was the dead body in a box of oak. It was trundled into the City on a huge and impractical gun-carriage. It was pulled by a great phalanx of lusty young men. It moved,lululemon outlet canada, huge and red with the Union flag, past hotels and steamy restaurants and newspaper offices and pubs, surrounded by this extraordinary silence that could not be broken even by the bands and the rhythmic feet,Toms Outlet,LaterI went almost. It was a silence, not of grief but of respect,Toms Outlet. In fact the City was stopped and was turned into a theatre and it was all performed as a drama that all men understand.</p><p>This was the last time that such a thing could happen. This was the last time that would be the capital of the world. This was an act of mourning for the imperial past. This marked the final act in Britain's greatness. This was a great gesture of self-pity and after this the coldness of reality and the status of Scandinavia,Toms Shoes.</p><p>But really this was a celebration. And however painful, most funerals are just that. When a man is buried,Cheap Air Max 90, those who are still alive crave some gesture of respect that cannot help the cadaver. And this gesture is made over and over again by Christians and Communists and humanists and the unconcerned. It is a proud half-conscious assertion that man is not an animal that dies alone in a hole. It is almost a gesture of contempt to the face of death. And once or twice in a generation, a dead monarch or hero is chosen to epitomise a whole nation's assertion of continuity and dignity. And because Churchill at a certain time and in a special way was, for all public purposes, Britain and more than Britain, this assertion was unbelievably eloquent over this corpse.</p><p>The ritual, performed to music like a masque for the edification of a king, said things that cannot quite be put into words. The whole country watched the agonised care of the eight guardsmen who carried the box. And vicariously shared their anxious pain. But perhaps most marvellous was the slow move up the turgid Thames, the gantries of cranes dipping in salute and the music of a host of pipers. There were generals in improbable uniforms and what looked like all the rulers of the world standing on the steps of St Paul's as if this were a family burial. A whole city looking in on itself as a dead body went by.</p><p>It was a triumph. It was a celebration of a great thing that we did in the past,Toms Shoes Outlet. It was an act of gratitude to a man whom we can no longer help or please. The many heads of state there were appropriate but not important,lululemon outlet. We were not sad. We knew for whom these bells tolled. We knew the man whose body we removed in such unimaginable splendour. And because he was us at our best, we gave him a requiem that rejected death and was almost a rejoicing.</p><p></p><p><em>This is an edited extract</em></p> </div> | ||
