With his customary generosity and grace Julian Bream gave his service to the funeral of my father, the poet laureate, Cecil Day-Lewis, at the small church of Stinsford, Dorset, in 1972. Crouching on his guitar recital chair, legs crossed, he turned the ordinary Anglican service into something heavenly with a sublime performance of three movements from one of Bach’s lute suites.
After the burial next to the Thomas Hardy family graves in the churchyard we moved on to a wake of wine and nibbles, where I thanked Julian for his lovely playing. And he told me he had been in agony throughout – he had bought new trousers for the occasion and they proved much too tight for comfort.
