There are just a couple of personal reflections I’d like to share. They’re both related to the idea of celebration, which is one reason I chose not to wear a black tie, but rather something with livelier and happier associations.

First, I’d like to tell you something I told mum on one of the shiningly lucid and beautiful days she had shortly before Sarah and Nick’s wedding. In starting this conversation with mum, I was taking the advice of a friend of mine whose mother had passed away, also as a result of cancer, a few weeks earlier. To cut a long story short, my friend had not been able to tell her mother those final things that she most wanted to say because, by that time her mother had already slipped into the deep unconsciousness from which she would not awaken. ‘Make sure’, she urged me, ‘that you take the opportunity to tell your mother what you really feel’. What I told mum, then, was that she was an indescribably wonderful and amazing person, one of the loveliest people you could ever hope to meet. And she was my mum! How much luckier could I be? I’ve had a lot of conversations with people whose relationship with one or both of their parents has been troubled, stormy, unhappy, bitter or just plain nasty. These have helped me to realise quite how privileged I have been to have had the kind of mum that I have had. She remains the kindest, most good natured, selfless person I know.

The second thing is that I’d like to recommend a book to you: Middlemarch, by George Elliott. There are many reasons why it’s worth reading, but for me the most important is its perspective on heroism. Heroism can be found, yes, in great and noble deeds publically recorded and handed down from one generation to the next. But the message at the heart of Middlemarch is that this view of heroism misses those most heroic of all people. Those people who, through their own contributions and sacrifice, through a thousand anonymously selfless acts, hold our lives together; who, through their love for us, nurture our finer sentiments and make us more loveable people. These heroes and heroines seldom gain any kind of public notoriety but we must cherish and celebrate them when we are privileged enough to have them in our lives. Mum was one such heroine, and it is a comfort to know that we come here today not just to mourn her passing but also to celebrate our good fortune in being touched by such a tender, radiantly beautiful soul.