Merry Christmas!

The lullaby ‘Sweet was the song the Virgin sang’ (words by G. R. Woodward) from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ cantata Hodie (1954)

Wishing all readers a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

‘Blessed be the time that apple taken was!’

A contribution to a virtual Advent Calendar of art, music and poetry compiled by members of Deo Gratias, a circle of Catholics in their twenties & thirties meeting fortnightly in London to discuss artistic and cultural expressions of the Christian faith.

Adam lay ybounden,
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long.

And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took.
As clerkës finden 
Written in their book.

Ne had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Ne had never our ladie
Abeen heav'ne queen.

Blessed be the time
That apple taken was:
Therefore we moun singen
Deo gratias.

This carol is one of several medieval lyrics, sacred and secular, that are preserved in a remarkable and unique fifteenth-century manuscript, possibly originating from Bury St. Edmunds, and now held at the British Library (Sloane MS 2593).  Like many medieval verses it is macaronic, combining Latin and the vernacular, and, as well as offering an aching glimpse into medieval Catholic England, it expresses in a nutshell one of Christianity's great theological paradoxes, the ‘felix culpa’ or ‘happy fault’ — the realisation that, in so far as Adam’s sin led to our redemption by Christ, we may actually rejoice that the sin occurred, so wonderful is that redemption.  We hear it in the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil: ‘O happy fault; O necessary sin of Adam, which won for us so great a Redeemer!’

Wearing its learning lightly, and with (I think) a particularly English humour, this carol expresses the same idea, but this time with respect to Mary.  The carol begins with Adam ‘bounden in a bond’, an allusion to the medieval idea that he lay in limbo until Christ's Harrowing of Hell on Holy Saturday.  I love the wry humour of the lines ‘Four thousand winter / Thought he not too long,’ which strike me almost as brotherly teasing; the same with ‘And all was for an apple, / An apple that he took’.  It is an acknowledgement of a kind of solidarity with Adam; an admission that he and we are all in the same pickle.

And yet — the poet says — if the apple had never been taken, if Adam had not sinned, Mary would never have been Queen of Heaven (since, implicitly, we would have had no need for Christ to save us).  Hence, strange to say,  ‘Blessed be the time / That apple taken was!’  This is the ‘felix culpa’, and a (surely deliberate) echo of the Exsultet.  And so, one senses to his own amazement, the catechist declares, ‘Therefore we moun singen [may sing] / Deo gratias.’  It is one of the most marvellous paradoxes of Christianity, and here is expressed concisely and with winsome humour, and also with the Marian devotion for which medieval England was renowned.

Several composers have set the carol to music. The best-known setting is probably Boris Ord’s, which has regular outings at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge.  Benjamin Britten also included a version in his Ceremony of Carols.  But I think my favourite is the setting by Philip Ledger, with the words ‘Deo Gratias’ as a haunting refrain.

‘Go forth, O Christian soul…’

The queue for the Queen’s lying-in-state at the King’s Stairs Gardens, Bermondsey, roughly five miles from Westminster.  10.30 a.m., 17th September 2022. 

My final contribution to the Second Elizabethan Age was, as it turned out, to take half a dozen newly-catalogued manuscripts down to the store, slide them into fresh envelopes, fasten them with archival tape, label them, and put them ready for shelving.  I had seen the lunchtime announcement about the Queen’s health, and worried and prayed as I worked, actually rather glad there was no computer downstairs.  By the time I surfaced again, the news had broken: it was a colleague in Security, an ex-serviceman, who told me.  “If it hadn’t been for her, this country would have gone to the dogs years ago,” he said flatly.

The day afterwards, a friend of mine happened to be cataloguing a file of condolence letters received by an actor’s widow, and came across a nice phrase: ‘You can prepare your mind, but you cannot prepare your heart.’  We had known the day would come and dreaded it, but even I was slightly taken aback by the grief that took hold of me when it did.  As others have said, the Queen’s death was not a surprise — but it was a shock.

Yet the way it happened was in several respects fitting, and therefore already consoling.  Not until after the pandemic, and the great Platinum Jubilee, and even this summer of ferocious heat and the shocking beige of drought were over; only once welcome showers were sending some of the life and colour flowing back into Britain’s veins, so that our landscapes were beginning to look themselves again, did the moment arrive.  The Queen saw us through, and then she went home.

And from the ten days of mourning that followed, too — with a first autumnal bittersweetness in the air, with the tearful glory of rainbows in the skies, with torn ragged clouds trailing overhead at dusk like smoke, with the hard underframe of the national story to which we all belong suddenly only just below the surface — I shall remember not only sorrow, but deep consolation.  I mean not only the constitutional reassurances — the ancient mechanisms of the accession ceremony, swinging into motion like a pair of sombre oaken doors, just, I realise, as they would have done, if needed, on any other day between 1952 and 2022 — I mean something deeper: spiritual consolation.  The lying-in-state, for instance, was balm for the soul, even when seen on television: the solemnity, the simple formality, the reverence.  And it worked, for in filed, and kept filing, thousands upon thousands of mourners, their faces strangely beautiful with love and grief, passing reverently through Westminster Hall, curtseying or bowing or even crossing themselves.  The live-streamed television pictures of this procession, though at times zooming a little intrusively into people’s faces, must be one of the most moving broadcasts I have ever seen.

The queue down Shad Thames, just E. of Tower Bridge.

And the extraordinary lengths of the queues showed the extent of the grief and the love, even as the pictures showed their depth.  Seeing dire warnings of a twenty-two-hour-long wait on the Saturday morning, my sister and cousin and I initially abandoned our plans to join the queue, deciding instead that we would walk along its length, past the mourners, pay our respects outside Westminster Hall, and then perhaps go to see the flowers in Green Park.  But just as we reached the start of the queue at Southwark Park, it was reopened with an estimated length of a mere sixteen hours, and we changed our minds and queued after all.

It was, as many have noticed, a pilgrimage — starting, for us, under the dingy girders of South Bermondsey station, along past Galleywall Road, through Southwark Park and a first set of interminable zigzags into the queue, past the makeshift tea-stands set up by enterprising residents, snaking among converted warehouses and bridges and embankments and theatres, over Lambeth Bridge, until, after a further two hours shuffling concertina-wise up and down Victoria Gardens, and a jarring bag-search and body-scan, at last we slipped into the thick solemn hush of Westminster Hall, with the rich colours of the catafalque before us, and the priceless brilliance of the Imperial State Crown flashing finely at journey’s end.

Zigs and zags at Tower Bridge

The whole experience (which turned out to be eleven hours long, not sixteen) taught me something about pilgrimage: that it is the natural expression of gratitude.  I had, and have, no way of repaying the Queen for her years of faith, and integrity, and quiet constant example.  All I could offer was a mark of respect before her coffin.  Small recompense indeed — but there was subconscious logic at work; the knowledge that if this little gesture could somehow be made to cost me more — if I had had to stand in a queue six miles long in order to be able to make it — perhaps it would actually come to be worth more.  Rather like the widow’s mite in the Gospel, my little bow would take on a greater meaning, because I had ‘given all I had’.

The Lambeth Embankment, across the river from Parliament, as the afternoon wears on

This, I think, has something to do with why, when I had heard that the queuing time had nearly doubled, my initial reaction was not dismay, but a strange instinctive determination that I was Jolly Well going to queue, come what may.  This is surely the same impulse that drives people to walk barefoot and impose on themselves all sorts of hard, tough exigencies while on pilgrimage.  It is, however heartily we laugh and joke with our fellow pilgrims along the way, a serious, deep, even primal gesture of love.

The Palace of Westminster from Lambeth Bridge, with flag at half-mast

I think the same is true of the great marches and the funeral offices: as well as solemn duties, they were acts of love and gratitude.  How beautiful, then, that they healed us even as we undertook them.  How comforting, too, were the beautiful prayers of the Anglican liturgy, their loving poetic language, commending our Queen to our God, and telling us again and again what we needed to hear: that whereas we rightly grieve our Sovereign who ‘now rests in sleep’, we may nevertheless have confidence both that ‘we shall rise again at the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ’  —  and, furthermore, that ‘in due time, we may share with our sister that clearer vision when we shall see thy face.’  We are right to grieve, but it is not the end: again and again I drank in the medicine of those words.  One sensed the wisdom of ages in the knowledge that ten full days would be needed for the initial salving and bandaging of the wound, for that ‘gracious promise’ to sink in once again.  

The two-mile-long concertina in Victoria Gardens

“We will miss Queen Elizabeth terribly,” said Archbishop of Southwark, John Wilson, at a beautiful Requiem Mass at St. George’s Cathedral the following morning.  I have written at length elsewhere in these pages of my admiration for the Queen, and of how extraordinarily blessed we have been to have at the heart of our national life a person who placed love so clearly above power, and for so long, and with such constancy.  She may not have made her personal opinions known, but she did show her beliefs, and the response to her death, the outpouring of grief and love, shows that this did not go unnoticed.  And so, as that extraordinary and bittersweet month slides away off into the past, and as we who share those beliefs, shouldering our loads, turn to carry on without her, we may take slow-burning courage from this parting gift: the vindication in her death of the manner of her life.

Go forth upon thy journey from this world, O Christian soul;
In the name of God the Father Almighty who created thee;
In the name of Jesus Christ who suffered for thee;
In the name of the Holy Spirit who strengtheneth thee.
In communion with the blessèd saints,
and aided by Angels and Archangels,
and all the armies of the heavenly host,
may thy portion this day be in peace,
and thy dwelling in the heavenly Jerusalem.  Amen.

A still frame from the BBC’s live stream from Westminster Hall.

Fanfare for Allhallowstide

All Saints’ Day in the city of Łódź in 2014.  In Poland it is traditional to place candles and flowers on the graves of loved ones, even if it involves a journey of hundreds of miles.
(Picture by 'Zorro2212' on Wikimedia Commons, shared under US licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

Reposted according to tradition...

     How shall we pilgrims keep the law of love?
  How shall we follow where our Lord has led?
  The saints know how: they point the way ahead;
  They watch the road to Heaven from above.

  The saints were young and old, were great and small;
  However they were called, one truth they knew:
  Whatever works of woe the world may do,
  The Lord shall never let His faithful fall.

  So we on earth, we should be saints as well;
  We wayward wayfarers whom they invite
  To blaze with love; to set the world alight;
  To join them in the joy in which they dwell.

  As we must one day die, they also died,
  But live now as we hope we too shall live.
  To all our friends in Heaven let us give
  Our joyful greetings at Allhallowstide!

Vaughan Williams 150

A revised version of an article from 2018.

‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth...’. From Sancta Civitas (1928), the composer’s favourite of his own choral works. 

Today, 12th October 2022, is the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958).  Was he England’s greatest composer?  He has plenty of strong competition of course, and perhaps half the fun is never quite to settle the question — but as far as I am concerned, if anyone is to match Vaughan Williams, then they too will have to draw me, irresistibly, again and again, yet in a different way every time, into a distinctive, great-hearted, masterfully-crafted musical world that is all its own.  He is in first place in my book.

Embed from Getty Images

Vaughan Williams photographed at home (The White Gates, Dorking, Surrey) in January, 1949.

His was a life that, in many ways, took place in reverse.  He emerged as a composer relatively late — not completing his first symphony until he was thirty-five — but from then on never diminished in his  output, even intensifying as he aged.  Those who might have perceived in his fifth symphony (premièred in 1942, his seventieth year) a mellowing in age, or a mood of valediction, would hardly have suspected that this was actually the half-way mark, and that there were four more symphonies to follow.  Throughout his last decade — well into his eighties — he seemed unstoppable, completing his three final symphonies, the opera The Pilgrim’s Progress (a lifetime’s work), concertos for harmonica and tuba and much more, all the while maintaining an energetic social life, both conducting and attending concerts.  And it was not only musically that he was thriving: after the death of his wife Adeline in 1951 after decades of illness, he was rejuvenated by a second marriage to the poet and playwright Ursula Wood (whose poetry he set to music).  So he seems almost to have been cut off in his prime, though he lived to eighty-five.

Music for the film 49th Parallel.

I admire Vaughan Williams in the first place for the most straightforward reason: because the sound of so much of his music appeals to me so directly.  Time and again he wove melodies, harmonies, textures and cadences masterfully together in the service of beauty, beauty for its own sake.  This beauty often seems so self-evident that I would struggle to explain it.  Yet that first appeal, having drawn me in, makes me all the more willing to listen again more carefully for details I have missed, or to brave the composer’s more challenging works.  In that way he has taught me a great deal about the more intellectual side of ‘serious music’: its forms, its structures, and the depth of expression that they make possible.  So, for example, I have found my life enriched both by the tuneful English Folk-song Suite, which I have loved since I was small, and by the Fourth and Sixth Symphonies, which I discovered in my twenties.  Yet in all his works the same personality is discernible: a companion and a teacher and a seer, who may challenge but never disregards the listener.

The third movement (Scherzo) of the London Symphony, played by the Spanish Radio and Television Orchestra and conducted by Carlos Kalmar.

This capacity for both simplicity and complexity is only part of another remarkable aspect of Vaughan Williams: his sheer versatility, or his ‘tremendous range’, as Vernon Handley put it.  He wrote music of so many flavours, for so many purposes, and all so convincingly, that it is sometimes hard to believe that they flowed from a single pen.  Is the same man really responsible for the tranquil Greensleeves Fantasia and the enthralling anguish of the fourth symphony; for the diabolical chortling of Satan’s Dance of Triumph (from his ballet Job) and the tiny jewel of an anthem, O Taste and See?  He went off searching for ideas in all sorts of directions, but always came back to his own distinctive drawing-board: his work always bears, somewhere or other, the hall-mark of one and the same personality.  There is Vaughan Williams the collector of folk songs, Vaughan Williams the scorer of films, Vaughan Williams the compiler of the English Hymnal.  His music might be sacred or secular, it might last for four minutes or four movements, it might summon full chorus and orchestra or call simply for a solo violin and piano.  For his harmonies he drew on everything from Tudor polyphony to thirties dance-band music; he also experimented with sonority, including a wind machine in his Seventh Symphony, a flügelhorn in his Ninth and ‘all the ’phones and ’spiels known to the composer’ in the Eighth.  And then there are the moods that pass over his music, as many and as various as the English weather’s: serene or furious, reserved or exuberant; proliferating with detail or hanging austerely in clear air. 

 One of the best ways of hearing many of these moods is in that eighth symphony — even in its first movement alone, which is constructed entirely around the very first four notes played.  Sir Mark Elder conducts the Hallé Orchestra.

Another characteristic of his music is — I can think of no subtler word — its manliness.  So much of it seems to express some aspect of, and to be so evidently the work of, the heart and spirit of a man.  In other words, there is a particularly masculine warmth, an outward robustness, a heartiness, a full-bloodedness about it all.  That is not to suggest that he did not mean his music for men and women alike, nor to assume that it was conscious or deliberate — it is simply part of the character and colour of his music.  His work is shot through with the vigour, the spirituality, the moods, the quickness, the temper, the restlessness, the passions, the solitary questing of manhood.

The second movement of the Concerto for Violin and Strings (1925; originally Concerto Accademico).   André Previn conducts the London Symphony Orchestra; James Buswell is the soloist.

Then there is his Englishness, the quality of his music which is perhaps most often commented on.  Vaughan Williams is credited with reviving and developing a particularly English style of music, one that was in contrast with the German idiom of Beethoven and Brahms and Mendelssohn that had prevailed before.  Vaughan Williams was interested in Tudor polyphony and traditional folk-song and the music of ordinary people, not for shallow or jealous reasons, but in a search for authenticity, and in a spirit of revival of old forgotten things and celebration of the particular — and it worked: his music sounds like home.  Hear how well it goes with Shakespeare, or with Chesterton; see how his hymns and carols have passed straight into the canon.  And he was keenly aware of the threats that England faced in his own day — war, the destruction of landscape, the decline in spirit.  Indeed, the sheer spiritual exhaustion of the modern world in general, sated with banality to the point of grief, is prefigured in much of his music.  Hear, for instance, the desolate passages that close the first movement of the Ninth Symphony:

Against despair and nihilism, though, Vaughan Williams was the great champion of the human spirit, and the idea of the lone pilgrim persevering against the odds preoccupied him all his life.  His reverence for folk-culture is precisely an example of this.  There is surely much to be said for founding ‘high art’ on traditional, unaffected idioms: familiar, time-worn songs keep high culture rooted in earth, while transfiguring the familiar elevates and enriches the popular culture.  And even as Vaughan Williams broke new ground with his symphonies and cantatas, he was content, I think, to be a servant of his age.  His heavy involvement in the Leith Hill Musical Festival, and his prolific output of hymns and film-scores and ‘practical music’ (notably the Concerto Grosso for musicians of varying accomplishment, or the Household Music written in wartime for whatever instruments were to hand) reveal a profoundly public-spirited man, unashamed of belonging to a particular time and place, and lending his talents to the service of others.  He himself was quite firm about this: ‘The composer must not shut himself up and think about art,’ he declared; ‘he must live with his fellows and make his art an expression of the whole community.’

For all these reasons and more besides, it is Vaughan Williams whom I hero-worship as Britain’s greatest composer.  Other composers may have shared many of the qualities I have described, but it is  only in him that they are all united.  His music, in all its variety, sounds as fresh as ever, and is still working its magic on lovers of beauty in new generations.  May it continue to lighten lives for centuries to come.

Ballad from the Suite for Viola and Orchestra

It is Meet and Right

Herbert Howells’ anthem for the late Queen’s Coronation in 1953: music that has been much in mind these past few days.  ‘Behold, O God, our defender, and look upon the face of thine anointed.  For one day in thy courts is better than a thousand.’  (Psalm 84)

It is remarkable: Britain has rediscovered solemnity.  Amid my grief — and it certainly has been grief, with the immovable knot of dread in the gut, the catch in the heart, the oblique recurring waves of disbelief — there is a deep well of consolation in seeing the dignified, fond farewell that we are giving our beloved Queen.

Of course, plenty of people are carrying on more or less as normal — loud phone conversations on trains, and so on — and conversations with friends and colleagues have revealed that not everyone is feeling particularly bereaved — several have admitted as much.  Some try to find something humorous to say, while others, perhaps wary of the ambush of sorrow, say breezily, ‘Well, it’s all part of history.’  Maybe at moments like these it has always been so: not everyone sees things in the same way and, after all, feelings cannot be forced.  But to me there is a real change in the air.

For instance, there was the sight of the flowers in Green Park on Sunday, the aisles and aisles of them under the September-heavy trees.  At first, as I wandered up and down them, my thoughts snagged on a mild anxiety that this might all be a little too sentimental, a little too much about us and not enough about the Queen, but then I saw the volunteers, going steadily through the flowers to remove the plastic wrapping — the sort of unglamorous but necessary task that the Queen herself would have noticed and admired — and was reassured.  I made my way up the Mall, past St. James’ Palace from whose window-sills the new King had been proclaimed the previous day, caught the conclusion of the Changing of the Guard at Horse Guards Parade, cut through into Whitehall, went on across Parliament Square and down Millbank, over the Thames at Lambeth Bridge, and ultimately to a beautifully said and sung Requiem Mass at St. George’s Cathedral.  I signed the condolence book there which had been carefully laid out.

This change in the air is a reassurance and a consolation.  Whereas normally, and above all in the pandemic ‘lockdowns’, we have had row after row of identical days like the cells of a blank spreadsheet, these days are heavy with meaning.  That weight tells us that we are right to mourn and to grieve, and to miss the Queen; that we are not being silly or over-sensitive in our sorrow.  Dignity and reverence and solemnity have returned, and for the right reasons.  (The sole mistake so far has been the decision to bring the Queen's coffin to London by air, rather than by rail as was the original plan.)  Even the screens that usually flicker their deranging advertisements at us now display still pictures of the late Queen with a sober message of condolence.

And then there was yesterday’s cortège, the slow drum-beat, the polished sombre brass, the thud of the guns and Big Ben tolling once every minute.  We of the smartphone generation, the children of the Internet Age, saw the coffin borne in sorrowful dutiful stateliness to the Palace of Westminster.  And  in Westminster Hall, where for now she lies in state, how fitting it all is, how right.  How rich all the colours are, so deep that they can be felt imbuing themselves into the memory.  They are as rich and deep as our grief: the thick warm yellow translucence of the candle-wax, the scarlet and gold of the furled standard, the clean stone, the purple-shrouded catafalque.

The BBC’s live stream of the vigil in Westminster Hall is, though a little intrusively zoomed-in on occasions, very moving to watch.  How strangely beautiful is the grief in the faces of the mourner-pilgrims who have waited many hours to pause, or to bow, or to make the sign of the Cross, or to salute, or even to blow a kiss.

The Queen has ‘surprised a hunger in ourselves to be more serious’ — and this, I think, is the first, immediate example of the way in which her life continues, and will continue, to bear fruit for us.  This is how it works, the life of faith: light catches light, heart speaks unto heart.  Those of us who shared or sympathised with her hopes and beliefs now feel the burden of responsibility falling on us, the duty to be little bolder in standing up for those beliefs, and living by them.

Part of our duty to the late Queen is, of course, giving the new King the acclamation he deserves.  And so we have, with such wonderful sonorous language — ‘Whereas it has pleased God to call to Himself our late Sovereign Lady Elizabeth of happy memory...’

I feel strangely at home in these otherworldly days of sorrow.  This is a deeply sad parting, a real wrench, and it is hard not to worry about the future — I am trying not to think about the loneliness which may well sweep in again after the funeral, that sense of an autumn of many things — but, as Joanna Bogle has pointed out, this is fundamentally not a horrible grief, as one feels after an outrage or a tragedy — it is a gentle farewell, mingled with deep gratitude and with confidence that the Lord whom our Queen served so well will say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ and receive her at last into Heaven.  And since, after all, as Her late Majesty herself told us, ‘grief is the price we pay for love’, it is only fair that I should settle my account.  So, strange to say, thanks be to God for this moment of togetherness in grief and love, and for all His bittersweet blessings.

Our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth

Her Late Majesty outside Hitchin station, 14th June 2012

Queen Elizabeth, for seventy years our unfailingly good and just sovereign, died earlier today.  

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her.  Welcome her into the kingdom of Heaven.  Amen.

For the moment I have no other words than these, written for her Platinum Jubilee:

Beacons

After the fanfare the beacons flare 
Out in the dusk and the still June air; 
Thousands of parishes blaze brave light 
Loyally into the nearing night, 
And on the hillside a quiet prayer 

Lifts, though the words are hard to find, 
Up from the heart; because, behind 
These great festivities, we know 
There are some deeper thanks we owe —
Thanks for deep faith, the quiet kind; 

Faith shown in small things that fulfil 
Great vows of youth; that sows good-will; 
Faith that has long encouraged us; 
Faith without faltering or fuss, 
Plain as a beacon on a hill. 

This long example that you have set 
Shows us, Your Majesty, how we yet 
May find eternal jubilee: 
We see, we understand and we 
Will not forget, will not forget.

Jubilee Thoughts

I had been worried that I would not enjoy the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee — not because I lacked enthusiasm for the occasion, but because I feared that the national celebration would not do it justice.  There is an impression often given by the purveyors of mainstream or at least mass culture, that they think the Crown exists merely on licence, so to speak, and that they are entitled to permit it to survive solely in the measure that it conforms to the tone, the language and the beliefs of secular modernity.  I worried too that the general inability of our culture to take anything seriously would drain the whole Jubilee of the solemnity, of the mystery, that underlies the celebration.  

Many of these fears did materialise, at least in part, but one way and another I found myself not minding too much.  At least, it certainly did not spoil a thoroughly enjoyable weekend which left me with plenty of happy memories.  There were some wonderful occasions which seemed to capture the spirit of the celebration marvellously — the lighting of the Jubilee beacons on a local summit of suburban south London, and a trip to Windsor to see a flotilla of barges and a display of classic cars — and in general it was heartening to see proper cheerful Union Jacks hung from houses and to know that people were making merry and having a good time together.  The flypast and Trooping the Colour (seen via television) were magnificent; the service at Westminster Abbey was dignified and beautiful.  There was also, on BBC Four, the very moving and warmly recommended programme ‘The Unseen Queen’: a compilation, presented by the Queen herself, of personal cine-films from her early life.  My strong impression was that Her Majesty intended this film less as an autobiography than as a tribute to her father George VI.

This Jubilee was the first chance for a national celebration we have had for some time — indeed for far too long.  The pandemic is the obvious cause of this drought, but we have had other troubles too.  Immediately before that we had had a great deal of understandable disagreement over the result of the European Union referendum, wrangling which, in retrospect, feels like something whose development and duration ought to have been expected but which, until the General Election in 2019, felt as if it would never end.  As it was, we went into the pandemic without those divisions properly healed.  The pandemic itself might have brought about a degree of unity, but of course not for celebration — and even that unity began, probably inevitably, to break down.  Then, during that strange and disturbing summer of 2020, partly, I think, in revenge for the referendum result, advantage was taken of our mutual isolation to push radical and alarming political agendas to the very top of non-political institutions.  So, all in all, for quite some time we have not been ourselves, and have been in need of a cause for proper and convivial unity, a chance for some national sentiment — and our Queen’s unwavering reign gave us one.

How long the good sentiments will last I do not know.  The Queen by her own example makes it clear to us what sort of a country, what sort of a people, she believes we ought to be.  Too many of us pretend not to hear her.  She must know — and, deep down, so must we — that she has been a better Queen to us than we have been subjects to her.  Rather like a grandmother who never ceases to love the grandchildren who have turned their backs on her and all her wisdom, she says no word of reproach, but neither does she concede one shred of principle.  Those of us who still believe in the old values, the eternal verities, hear and understand her, and we will keep her words in mind long after the bunting has been taken down.

For what we are celebrating — the mystery beneath the merriment — is the fulfilment of a great vow.  The Jubilee reminds us, among other things, that such achievements, such greatnesses, remain possible.  It is a wondrous and a fearsome truth, and reason for heartfelt thanksgiving.

On Praying for Ukraine

In recent days two notices, each outside different Anglican churches, have happened to catch my eye.  One read, ‘We Pray for Ukraine’; the other, ‘Ukrainians Welcome Here’.  

And so we should, and so they should be.  But ought we not also, albeit in a different way, to be praying for Russia; should Russians of good will not also be made welcome?  The obvious plight of Ukraine makes our prayers as straightforward as they are ardent, but it seems to me to be no less important to pray for Russia, even if the words are necessarily more complex and rather harder to say.  The sparing of the young army conscripts and their families, the consolation of the unjustly bereaved, the success of those working underground or behind the scenes to bring a just end to the whole situation, in general the liberation of Russia’s people from their thousand-year nightmare, and — perhaps most difficult of all — the conversion and ultimately the forgiveness of her leaders and soldiers who have willingly spilled blood and brought disgrace on their nation — all these we can surely pray for without excusing or overlooking in any way the evil that has been done in Russia’s name.

Since a nation is a larger, looser version of a family, the bonds that bind it implicate all its members in its collective reputation, its collective fate.  But although the fate is collective, responsibility for that fate is not.  Thus, while the name of Russia is soiled by this new outrage, only a minority of Russians are actually to blame for it.  It is a horrible situation for them — certainly, more abstract and less raw in its horror than having one’s homeland blasted to ashes, but horrible nonetheless.  To pray for them is an act both of mercy and of justice.

The intentions behind the churches’ signs were good and sincere, I do not doubt, and I am confident that any Russians appearing in the pews would be welcomed there in practice, but we should do our best not to leave these things in any doubt, nor to let it be thought that our prayers are too hasty, or too reflexive, or unduly partial.  So, hard as it may be in this one-sided situation, we should try to pray for consolation wherever there is suffering, for justice wherever there is injustice, for mercy wherever there is contrition.

Six years since World Youth Day in Kraków

Six years ago today I was sitting at my laptop in my student flat, watching the opening Mass of World Youth Day in Kraków, and wishing more with every minute that I were there.  I was struck particularly by the music, which was supplied by a full choir and orchestra and consisted of fine, uplifting hymns and a beautiful Mass setting — full of a kind of joyful stateliness for the occasion, and all with rich, even cinematic orchestration.  

My endeavours to try and find out more, or indeed anything, about it all — what the hymns were called and how to spell them, let alone who had composed them! — sparked an effort to learn Polish pronunciation (which turned out not to be as hard as it looks) and a tentative but continuing attempt to learn the language itself.  And it drew me into the discovery and deepening love of Polish church music and the life that surrounds it — everything from their travelling liturgical music workshops, which draw hundreds of people to make music together, to the enormous outdoor hymn-concerts held every year in the city of Rzeszów.  The discovery of the Dominican Liturgical Centre in Kraków has been a revelation, and last October it was a joy and a privilege to take part in a workshop given by the composer Paweł Bębenek at St. Dominic’s Priory in London, and then to sing music composed by him and his fellow composers in an unforgettable candle-lit vigil.

Today is also, of course, the sixth anniversary of the martyrdom of père Jacques Hamel of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen.  The mingling of the two events as they reached me from afar — of the joy of World Youth Day and the sharp sorrow of that news — is something else which has fixed that day in my memory.

The Agnus Dei of Henryk Jan Botor’s Missa Ioannis Paoli Secundi, written specially for World Youth Day and sung at its opening Mass at Błonia Park, Kraków, on the 26th July 2016.  This setting has proved popular with our parish Youth Choir in South London.

Finding Adlestrop

Yes.  I remember Adlestrop —

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly.  It was late June.

In fact it was the twenty-fourth of June: today is the anniversary of the ‘afternoon of heat’ that inspired this much-loved poem.  On this day in 1914 Edward Thomas was aboard the London to Hereford express, climbing up over the north Cotswolds, on his way to the poets’ colony at Dymock in Gloucestershire.  It was, as he recorded in his journal —

[...] a glorious day from 4:20 am and at 10 tiers above tiers of white cloud with dirtied grey bars above the sea of slate and dull brick by Battersea Park — then at Oxford tiers of pure white with loose large masses above and gaps of dark clear blue above haymaking and elms.

Then we stopped at Adlestrop, through the willows could be heard a chain of blackbirds songs at 12:45 and one thrush and no man seen, only a hiss of engine letting off steam.

Stopping outside Campden by banks of long grass willowherb and meadowsweet, extraordinary silence between the two periods of travel — looking out on grey dry stones between metals and the shining metals and over it all the elms willows and long grass — one man clears his throat — greater than rustic silence.  No house in view.  Stop only for a minute till signal is up. 

Another stop like this outside Colwell [Colwall, just west of the Malverns?] on 27th with thrush singing on hillside above on road.

I hope I do Edward Thomas no disservice in observing that it is as much because of circumstance as the poem’s beauty in itself that this poem is so fondly and firmly remembered.  Within three months of that afternoon Britain was at war; three years later Thomas was dead, killed by a shell at Arras.  In March 1963 they came for the station as well: if you turn in your copy of Richard Beeching’s ‘The Reshaping of British Railways’ part 1, section 3, to page 109, the list for England of 'Passenger Stations and Halts to be Closed’ — a list which reads, Ian Hislop has observed, ‘like the names on a war memorial’ — there it is, the fifth item from the top, ‘Adlestrop’, in cold dispassionate print between Addingham and Ainsdale: so callously tin-eared, so ruthlessly bureaucratic and ignorant, so bone-headedly inevitable, that there is something actually poetic and tragic about its presence on this list.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop — only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Thomas recorded the event because he knew it was fleeting, one of those in-between moments that we so seldom remember to remember — but did he realise how fleeting how much of it was?  For it is not only the moment that is now lost, but the country, the world in which it was possible.  Not only ‘that minute’ but most of what was in it and around it: the locomotive, the station, the silence aboard stationary carriages; no doubt most of the birdsong too.  The Dymock colony, the whole reason for the journey — the whole set of circumstances upon which it was contingent.  The railway survives — Brunel’s ‘Cotswold line’ from Oxford to Worcester is still one of Britain’s most beautiful —  but of the station, apart from the stationmaster’s house, only the sign remains, mounted on a bus stop in the village  — only the name.  

The poem itself seems in retrospect as fragile and precious as the moment it is describing: written just in time, in the last years when such a poem could be made, by Thomas or anyone else.  This one vignette of a single signal-check has been pressed and hardened by the tremendous historical forces around it into a tiny treasured gem, standing not only for itself, but for all those other unwonted moments of ‘extraordinary silence’ that were possible, and about which poems could have been written, in that old world before the war.  Almost by accident, then, we have this snapshot from a time, perhaps the last time, when Deep England could still make a riposte to the modern world, could conspire to bring a modern express train to a grinding halt and ambush its passengers with her shocking stillness.  Thomas’s sketch — which even in finished form retains the jotted-down freshness of his original journal entry — is now as strangely dizzying as one of those old autochrome photographs, so real we can scarcely believe it.

The site of Adlestrop station is between Kingham and Moreton-in-Marsh stations on the climb to Chipping Campden summit; the precise coordinates are 51.9360°N 1.6591°W, immediately north-west of the overbridge carrying the road from Adlestrop to Oddington.  On this cab-ride video of the journey from London Paddington to Hereford, the site can be seen just after the bridge at 1h 16m seconds.  (The former stationmaster’s house can just be glimpsed on the left).

Thomas was absolutely correct, by the way, to speak of ‘Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire’ — the county boundary crosses the railway less than a mile from the station in the up direction. (Its rough position is indicated by a caption on the cab-ride video at 1h 14m 40s; the line it takes is rather convoluted but it makes its final crossing of the railway at the end of the wall of tall trees on the right).  Thomas’s last line was as accurate as it was evocative.

What does it mean, I wonder, that at the poem’s centenary in 2014, a special train was organised to recreate the ‘unwonted stop’, slowing down at the old station so that the lines could be read over the loudspeaker?  Here is a video taken from aboard the train —

— and here is another from the overbridge itself, where the poem was also read as the train rounded the curve.

I cannot help feeling that something deep and beautiful is happening here.  These people have come to a particular place at a particular time — in other words, come on pilgrimage — for the sake of a much-loved, long-remembered poem.  Poetry often seems to be at its strongest when it works through the memory, and this poem, in touching not only our minds and hearts but the English landscape and time itself, has become a kind of memorial — one not of marble or granite, but made up of all four of those elements: minds, hearts, landscape, time.  Thus, just as the poem has come to stand for a whole vanished world, so this remembrance of the poem was a remembrance of that world.  To remember Adlestrop is to remember England.  And, even though it has been blotted out of the landscape and is no more than a memory, Adlestrop station still persists; it still somehow belongs to the English landscape, and the poem keeps it there. 

So for that minute a lost world lived again, proven still to abide in many minds and hearts; and poetry sustained it, poetry summoned it into sight.  Poetry is deeper than we know; it is as deep as England, as history, as life itself.

‘Jednego Serca Jednego Ducha’ at full strength once more

The feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated last Thursday in Poland (where indeed it is a national holiday), and in the south-eastern city of Rzeszów there was the welcome return in its full form of one tradition: ‘Jednego Serca Jednego Ducha’, ‘Of One Heart, Of One Spirit’, the great annual outdoor hymn concert.  (I have written more about these concerts here, and this year’s edition, which I’ve been catching up with, can be watched in full here).  

These past two years the concert has of course been constrained by various pandemic restrictions — though the organisers heroically put together an online concert in time for Corpus Christi in 2020, and then organised two live concerts with reduced audiences in September 2020 and Corpus Christi 2021.  This is the first time that it has been possible to relax a little more about the virus, and to enter more freely into its old mood of joyful, prayerful togetherness — a mood which persisted in spite of a terrific rain-storm whose arrival coincided squarely with the beginning of the concert!  Amid the wind and the rain it was nice to see some by now familiar faces once again: Hubert Kowalski conducting the orchestra, Joachim Mencel playing the hurdy-gurdy, Jan Budziaszek the percussionist and one of the main founders, and the various Pospieszalskis and Posieszalskas: Marcin, Lidia, Barbara…

This has also, of course, been the first edition of the concert since the beginning of the Russian war on Ukraine.  Rzeszów is only fifty or so miles from the western Ukrainian border, and it is this part of Poland which has been at the forefront of the country’s heroic response to the refugee crisis.  And of course, although Russia’s wrath is now mostly concentrated in eastern Ukraine, her forces have proved themselves capable of firing missiles well into the west, with seemingly gratuitous strikes on the city of Lviv and military positions only ten miles from Poland’s border.  So to the musicians and the concert-goers the war will be and remain an immediate and pressing concern.  And it only reinforces a paradox at which I have wondered before: that this hymn-concert, one of the most hopeful, joyful sights in Europe, has grown up in a part of our continent which has seen some of its worst and longest suffering.

It was as right and just as it was to be expected that some Ukrainian musicians were invited to contribute to the music. The band ‘Kana’ are already regulars at the concerts, but there were also some bandura players from Lviv, bringing to the stage a haunting sound that was new to me.  As well as these there were the old favourite of course: a big orchestral number at the beginning followed by Paweł Bębenek’s ‘Dzięki Ci, Panie’ (‘Thank you, Lord’); the exuberant ‘Jezus zwyciężył’, ‘Jesus has triumphed’, which is the cue for the multitude to go wild; and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.

The flavour of the concert seems in recent years to have been moving in more of an American-style ‘praise-and-worship’ direction, but what I have always preferred and looked forward to most are the home-grown orchestral arrangements and jazzings-up of favourite Polish hymns.  Several of these seem to appear every year — I’m never sure who is responsible for them but I think usually either Marcin Pospieszalski or Hubert Kowalski are the culprits — and at least one of them always strikes me as a real gem.  This year I was rather taken with a setting of lines from a much-loved poem by the Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584):

Czego chcesz od nas, Panie, za Twe hojne dary?
Czego za dobrodziejstwa, którym nie masz miary?
Kościół Cię nie ogarnie, wszędy pełno Ciebie:
I w otchłaniach, i w morzu, na ziemi, na niebie.

Tyś Pan wszytkiego świata.  Tyś niebo zbudował
I złotymi gwiazdami ślicznieś uhaftował.
Tyś fundament założył nieobeszłej ziemi
I przykryłeś jej nagość zioły rozlicznemi.

Tobie k woli rozliczne kwiatki Wiosna rodzi,
Tobie k woli w kłosianym wieńcu Lato chodzi,
Wino Jesień i jabłka rozmaite dawa,
Potym do gotowego gnuśna Zima wstawa.

Here is a translation (from StaroPolska.pl,
http://www.staropolska.pl/renesans/jan_kochanowski/czego_chcesz_Panie.html):

What do You want from us, Lord, for Your lavish gifts?
What for the benefactions, which have no limits?
The Church will not contain You; You are everywhere:
On the earth, in the depths, the sea, the open air.

You are the Lord of the whole world, You built the sky,
And embroidered it splendidly with gold stars high.
Of the earth untraversed You lay the foundation
And covered its bareness with rich vegetation.

By Your will Spring brings flowers, in abundance born,
By Your will Summer wears wreaths made from ears of corn.
Autumn gives out wine and apples of various kinds,
Idle Winter rises, when ready meal she finds.

The melody of the song in the concert was composed by Jacek Sykulski (1969–), a beautiful setting which has become a popular hymn —

— but Mateusz Pospieszalski — brother of Marcin, the bass-guitarist and Jednego Serca stalwart — has given it a lavish arrangement, jazzing it up with a syncopated five-time rhythm, a clever lyrical part for strings, a refrain which proves delightfully contrapuntal, and some irresistible ripplings from the harp.  I don’t think they needed to change key halfway through, but otherwise I thought it a very affecting rendition, and loved especially the low, clear, pure tone of the upper voices in the second verse.  By the way, the soloist on the left, Barbara Pospieszalska, is Mateusz’s niece.

So, as I have had occasion to say before, there are plenty of good things going on in Poland.  New music with old roots, spontaneous youngsters dancing the conga, ladies with flowers in their hair, thousands of voices singing hymns in the rain…  Niech żyje Polska!  Long live Poland, and happy Corpus Christi!

Beacons: a poem for the Jubilee

to Her Majesty the Queen, on the occasion of her Platinum Jubilee

After the fanfare the beacons flare 
Out in the dusk and the still June air; 
Thousands of parishes blaze brave light 
Loyally into the nearing night, 
And on the hillside a quiet prayer 

Lifts, though the words are hard to find, 
Up from the heart; because, behind 
These great festivities, we know 
There are some deeper thanks we owe —
Thanks for deep faith, the quiet kind; 

Faith shown in small things that fulfil 
Great vows of youth; that sows good-will; 
Faith that has long encouraged us; 
Faith without faltering or fuss, 
Plain as a beacon on a hill. 

This long example that you have set 
Shows us, Your Majesty, how we yet 
May find eternal jubilee: 
We see, we understand and we 
Will not forget, will not forget. 

   Pentecost Sunday, 5th June, 2022.

The Jubilee Beacon, St. Helier, south London, 2nd June 2022.

Happy Jubilee!

Well, the moment is here.  Wishing a very happy Jubilee holiday to one and all, but most of all to our beloved Queen Elizabeth, who has reigned over us so long and so well, and whose example has been unfailing.  May God bless her and keep her always.

A new portrait by Ronald Mackechnie

“I cannot lead you into battle; I do not give you laws or administer justice; but I can do something else: I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.”

— from the Christmas Broadcast of 1957

The Elizabeth line: more pictures

Of course, I haven’t been able to resist some more rides on the Elizabeth line in its first week of operation.  On Friday I ventured to Liverpool Street station, whose new platforms are so long that at their western end there is a direct connection to Moorgate station.  Similarly, the eastern end of Farringdon has a connection with Barbican on the Metropolitan line.  That gives an idea of the colossal scale of this project — as do, I hope, the pictures below.  All show the Moorgate exit at Liverpool Street.

Perhaps, too, I will withdraw my previous comment about the trains feeling narrow and dull... on subsequent trips they have seemed much more spacious than I first thought.  The lighting is subtle, rather than dull.  And they are British-built (by Bombardier in Derby) too.

The Elizabeth Line is Open

London’s long-awaited new railway, the Elizabeth line, or Crossrail, is open at last.  Three colleagues and I could not resist going down yesterday lunchtime for a ride on its first day, and found our newest underground railway just as impressive as I had hoped.  The first impression — conveyed mainly by the ambience of the stations — is extraordinary.  They are immensely spacious — goodness knows how much earth they have brought up out of them — and the arches and vaults are of cathedralline proportions.  Their gentle contours, combined with the clever up-lighting of the arched ceilings, produce a remarkably soft, calming effect.  The acoustics, too, are soft, almost homely; neither echoing nor claustrophobic.  There were plenty of people around, but they were being absorbed effortlessly into the space.  There is a clear intelligibility and straightforwardness to the layout, and therefore to navigation.  There seems to be far less of the disorientation that one can find in the narrow corridors of the old Tube.

Farringdon station

The platforms are similarly wide and generous.  As on the Jubilee line extension (a different line for a different Jubilee!), a long row of glass doors protects waiting passengers from arriving trains —  and it is along this structure, not the ceilings or walls, that the departure boards are mounted.  This is another factor in the remarkably clean, uncluttered atmosphere — there is a clear line of sight right down the long, dead-straight platforms.

At Paddington

The class 345 trains, too, are excellent.  By comparison to the stations they feel a little narrow and less brightly-lit, and the platform barriers add to a slight sense of stepping into the unknown, but I think this was bound to be the case by comparison, and it should not take long to get used to.  Beyond question, though, they are very sleek, very fast, very smooth, and very quiet.  The line speed must be something like 40–50mph, but it would be hard to tell this either by the noise or the vibration; indeed, the ride quality is superior to that of some inter-city trains!

Farringdon

‘Space-age’ is YouTube personality Geoff Marshall’s verdict, and I think he is quite right: not only in its architecture and atmosphere, but also in the way it warps space and time.  I had expected the excitement of seeing the new line, but I did not anticipate another, deeper, sensation that came on gradually during the first journey, and which still has not fully subsided: a kind of semi-euphoric vertigo, a disbelieving wonder at the change; not just at the new infrastructure in itself but the change it has brought to London as a whole.  To see the name ‘Tottenham Court Road’ appearing through the window when I had only just got on at Farringdon seemed impossible, as if some rule of physics had been broken; it was a little like seeing water flowing uphill.  My known city has been remoulded and remade, its entire east-west dimension shrunk or tightened by an elastic belt.  Back on the surface I found myself struggling slightly to believe that it had all been real, and not some cheese-sandwich-induced lunchtime daydream.  It was a feeling exactly opposite to my disbelieving horror at the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris: a struggle to comprehend to a new reality, though in this case the change is altogether welcome.  

Farringdon

This sensation has probably been intensified by its rarity.  One way and another, I am used to bracing myself against dismay at most major events or developments in today’s Britain, including most construction projects.  Yet in contrast to so many dispiriting new developments, with their chunky and plasticky intrusions into our city-scape, this line is, as Mary Harrington points out in a new article, beyond question ‘something London wants and London needs’.  It is an unambiguous and unequivocal contribution towards our common good.  What is more, down underground, with no well-weathered or hand-made surroundings to clash with, its modernist and futuristic architecture not only makes sense but works in practice.  Here, then, for once, is something new that still corresponds to my Britain as I imagine it.  A new 50-mph underground line named after the Queen is something I myself might have dreamt of, something I would have had built if I were in charge!  Somehow, in spite of everything that has gone wrong in our poor country, we have got this right.  The air of excited discovery among the first-day passengers, our delight at the transfigured city — even the smiles, a rare sight indeed on the Underground! —  is surely testament to this.

Farringdon

The new line has summoned up the spice of excitement, the thrilling realisation that bold things really are possible; that it is possible to change a city — to change the fabric of the world! — for the better.  It is a rare taste of the Victorian age, or alternatively of what it is like to be French.  But the overall impression of sleekness and effortlessness belies how hard-won this triumph has been.  It has been a gigantic and complicated task, completed against considerable odds.  

This is a historic day for London and indeed the whole country.  The Elizabeth line may have suffered severe delays to its opening, but it has worked out all right as it now constitutes a magnificent Jubilee present for us all.  It is a superb addition to Britain’s railways, and worthy of the name it bears.

Farewell to the 455s

Through Mitcham Eastfields on a Horsham train, 10 August 2011

This coming Saturday, 14th May, sees the withdrawal from the suburban routes of the South Central Division — the tangle of railways running out of Victoria and London Bridge into south London — of the class 455 electric multiple units that have held sway in these parts for nearly forty years.  Their siblings on the South Western lines out of Waterloo will apparently follow in the next few months.

Basking in the sun at Victoria, 28 August 2013

Few ordinary passengers are likely to mourn them.  They are not glamorous, nor were they built to be, though I think better care could still have been taken of their interiors in recent years.  They were designed for mass short-distance transport, to lug commuters around the Hills and Commons of the southern boroughs; to venture to climes no more exotic than Crystal Palace, Epsom Downs, Caterham or Dorking.  I doubt they have averaged more than around twenty miles per hour over the course of their working lives.  But they have worked solidly, clocking up thousands upon thousands of rush-hours since the early 1980s.

Rumbling across the South Circular overbridge into Tulse Hill, bound for the Wimbledon loop, 11 April 2019

I am among those who will miss them.  It was against the backdrop of these faithful workhorses, plying their way up to London or down to Dorking, their acceleration distantly, enticingly audible over the suburban rooftops, that my rail enthusiasm was first contracted and swiftly found to be incurable.  The aforementioned South Western sister-class ran right past my grandmother’s garden, and I used a 455 as my subject for the centre-piece of a school art project (because I knew I could draw trains and buildings, but not people!).  More recently — until the pandemic in fact — my train into work was reliably formed by one of these units.

A Victoria-bound semi-fast accelerating through Mitcham Eastfields, 4 January 2011

Like the slightly younger 319s (themselves a familiar sight around South London until a few years ago) and their cousins the recently-scrapped two-car 456s, the 455s were built at York by British Rail Engineering Limited, as lettering on the step-plates proudly declared.  However, in contrast to the 319s — which were more souped-up trains, designed for Luton and Gatwick routes, for people with flights to catch, always seeming cramped by the chords and spurs of suburban south London, itching for the open stretches of the Brighton or Midland main lines — the 455s seemed gentler and more sedate, more suited to the way we do things here, south of the river, in the land of the electrified third rail.  To a 455, with its seldom-attained top speed of 75 mph, it did not seem to matter if we got to Ewell East now or some time next week.  They trundled their way around, taking their time about everything.  No point rushing this curve or that junction; there’ll only be something else to brake for around the next bend.  

Through the window onto dawn-lit commuterland, 1 October 2018

Adding to the dreamy aura of these trains were the various reassuring sounds they made: the chirruping of the brakes and the soft sigh on their release, the warble-piping of the original door alarms, the clunk of the camshaft on departure, and the leisurely thrumming of the brake compressors, this last being the sound I will miss the most.  Then there were the motors, matching the register of a cello, rising from a growl from a standstill to the very top of the tenor range if given the chance to stretch their legs.  The only alarming sound was the occasional crunch of electricity arcing from the third rail. 

Arriving at Streatham Hill on the 1617 to London Bridge, the once-daily parliamentary service via the Leigham Spur and Tulse Hill, 25 April 2019

The motors themselves are worth remarking on, for they are actually recycled.  Incredible as it may sound, they are over eighty years old, and more than twice the age the trains they have been powering.  The early Eighties, when these units were built, were not an easy time for British Rail, which, struggling under persistent inadequacies in government subsidy, had constantly to make do and mend with their scarce resources.  Their solution in this case was to fit the new trains with not only second- but third-hand motors built originally by the Southern Railway for its electric units in the 1930s.  Though now into their ninth decade and effectively dating from the electrification itself, the motors still seem perfectly sound to my ear.  Whatever the reason is for the withdrawal of these trains, I doubt it has anything to do with the traction equipment.

A down train draws into Wandsworth Common, 9 December 2018

I am not the only one sad to see them go.  ‘South London is [going to] feel weird without them,’ said one contributor to the ever-perusable Rail Forums.  Another chap, a driver who also films the modern railway scene and has a presence on YouTube, told me in an exchange in the comments, ‘These were the trains I grew up on, the trains that took me on all sorts of adventures and when I passed out [i.e. qualified] as a driver became my core traction.’

Epsom train rounding the curve south of Mitcham Junction, 4 February 2022

There is always a pang to see the clearing out of the furniture of our beginnings, however ordinary these things may be.  Perhaps, in fact, the more ordinary and the more constant they have seemed, the sharper the pang.  Bit by bit, the railscape of my childhood is disappearing (the analogue signals, the bell at Eastfields level crossing, the late Phil Sayer’s voice over the speakers...), and by the end of this weekend another major part of it will have crumbled completely away.  I will certainly miss the familiar presence of these old units, with the many associations they hold for me.

A final farewell, Mitcham Common, 4 February 2022

But let us end with the nearest a 455 ever came to attaining railway glory.  Under the pre-2018 timetable, one single passenger service each weekday was booked to run non-stop down the fourteen-mile line from Dorking to Horsham, and this was generally allocated to a 455 unit.  So, just before that timetable was abolished, I took one of the last opportunities to experience this run, and filmed the journey from just beyond Betchworth Tunnel to just short of Horsham.  As I have said, 455s hardly ever had the chance of a clear non-stop flat-out run like this, and certainly in their latter years Horsham was the furthest south they ever ventured in regular service.  So it was a rare treat to see this humble suburban unit reliving the glory days of the old Bognor expresses, accelerating to the full line speed of 75 mph along probably my favourite stretch of railway in south-east England.  (We really begin to pick up speed after Holmwood, five minutes in, and after Ockley, at six minutes, there is the added bonus of some jointed track, which we hammer over at full tilt.)  The date was the 14th May, 2018 — four years to the day, as it turns out, before the final withdrawal of the class.