One of the consolations that comes with being a Catholic is being able to pray for the dead. Through prayer one can remain with those one loved, and do something to mitigate their suffering in purgatory – particularly valuable when one feels one might have done more for them when they were alive. On the feast of All Souls the names of those for whom one would like the priest to pray are placed before the altar, and in anticipation I keep a list of deceased friends and members of my family which, given my age, gets longer by the day.
The most recent addition was the Spectator columnist and editor of The Oldie, Alexander Chancellor. I first met him 55 years ago when were both in our third year at Cambridge. My first two years had been disappointing: after mixing with interesting adults in Paris and London in my year out, I then found myself largely confined to the company of young men and women fresh from school. All that changed after I met Alexander. He was handsome, charming, amusing and kind – the Sebastian Flyte of a small circle of friends; an accomplished pianist who accompanied himself singing saloon bar songs; always cheerful and extraordinarily generous and so always in debt. He became and remained my closest friend.
Behind the charm, and the manner of an aristocratic amateur, there was a strong will and a genius for journalism which lifted the Spectator out of the doldrums when he was appointed editor by Henry Keswick in 1975. He was the founding editor of the Independent Magazine, editor of “The Talk of the Town” at the New Yorker under Tina Brown, wrote a column for the Guardian and latterly the “Long Life” column back at the Spectator. He took over from Richard Ingrams as editor of the Oldie, and was commissioning an article from his hospital bed the night before he died.
Alexander was not religious, though he felt a great affection for the Church of England. He was patrician without being at all snobbish – proud of his Scottish ancestry and forefathers such as Sir John Chancellor, the governor of Palestine.
He had a wide-ranging curiosity and humourous take on what was going on in the world – whether it was Brexit or the life of his ducks and hens at Stoke Park, his house in Northamptonshire – and wrote in a distinctive, mellifluous style His last column for the Spectator was a diatribe against Donald Trump.
He remained as generous as he had been at Cambridge, and so was always short of money. His drank and smoked to excess. His personal life was complex. He had a vast army of friends. I can think of no one who was so loved by so many.
There have been other additions to my list in the past few months – among them my younger brother Ben, and my literary agent, Gillon Aitken.
The novelist Emma Tennant, who died a week before Alexander, was at one time married to another Alexander, Alexander Cockburn, a friend from the early 1960s when we worked together on the TLS. I lost touch with them both, as I did with so many of the friends of my youth, after marrying and then finding little space for sustaining old friendships between writing books and raising children.
Some friends went to live abroad. Alexander Cockburn, after his divorce from Emma Tennant, left for the US – followed later by Christopher Hitchens and most recently Martin Amis. Cockburn and Hitchens are both on my list – Christopher, the atheist Pied Piper, in particular need of prayers.
St John Chrysostom taught that one should not mourn the dead, but rejoice that, after purification in purgatory, they will be united with God. Praying for the dead sustains that hope, but it is hard to avoid, as one looks back on some of their lives, a certain sadness. There are six suicides on my list, all but one being young women – each life ending in a tragedy which one feels one might have done more to avert.
One friend, the writer JG Farrell, was swept off a rock into the sea and drowned – the loss of a singular talent. Another, Margaret Fitzherbert, was struck by a car as she crossed a road in north London. Some died after strokes or heart failure. Most died from cancer. In a number of cases, one can point to heavy drinking and smoking, or the taking of drugs in their youth; but among those who died prematurely there are also models of moderation and healthy living.
Not just the day and the hour of our death are unknown, but also the means. Despite advances in medical science, we remain in the hands of God.
Piers Paul Read is a novelist, historian and biographer
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