Honor Chapman's Memorial Service on Wednesday afternoon was really something !
The church of St George's in Hanover Square is a hidden gem - I'd certainly never been in it before and its glories were a revelation !
Of course we have all seen its pukka portico at the front, but I wasn't expecting a proper stained glass window the size of a small office block behind the altar and the scale and proportion of the space is a triumph. A proper Vicar and a proper choir ! Oh yes !
For someone as irreligious but yet deeply in need of spiritual balm as myself, it works a treat. I thoroughly recommend you pay a visit if you've never seen it.
And before you come screaming down the e-mail, I appreciate that London is stuffed full of such treasures - we just owe it to ourselves to make the time.
So.... 400 of us there then, and at least another hundred or so who would have been there if they could ! Trevor Osborne, Pippa Aitken, Ian Henderson, Rupert Nabarro, John Lett, Michael Edwards, Steven O'Brien, Tony Bickmore, I give you just a taste of the diverse range of folks I saw around me in the congregation.
Oh, guys, we should all aspire to command such a turnout ! Amazing !
And the Service. What a Service! A number of fantastic speeches and hymns (am still suffering from cortical deafness from Eric Sorensen's rendering of Bread of Heaven).
Among other highlights, Judith Mayhew made an amazing address about Honor's work with London First and her role as pioneer for putting women onto Boards.
Now, Honor was once very kind indeed to me. My great friend, and mentor, Geoff Marsh was devoted to her and, of course, she made a huge contribution to urban regeneration in the UK, whether at Jones Lang Wooton or elsewhere, so I already had a great number of reasons to pay my respects.
But if you had ever asked me if Honor Chapman had been a feminist I would have laughed out loud and muttered some half-baked retort to the effect of pulling up drawbridges. But I would have been wrong, wrong, wrong. And the huge number of senior women present yesterday were testament to that. However, it certainly wasn't a blatant campaign: as that wise old owl, Francis Salway, said to me later, it wasn't fashionable when she did it and her operation was covert.
So, back to Jones Lang for a cup of tea and a very nice smoked salmon sarnie. All very English ! Andrew Gould really deserves our thanks and congratulations for orchestrating such a fitting tribute altogether. No mean feat given the marauding hordes involved; it was a big job and very well done. As indeed we observed later as Peter Wynn Rees, Patricia Brown and I raised a glass to The Great Woman, around the corner in the trusty Balls Bros!
A most moving affair.
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