Anthony Howard: a eulogy you must read

This week I attended the combined funeral/memorial service for the journalist and writer Anthony Howard. I didn’t know him well, but I had interviewed him often and somehow his unique journalistic person had threaded through most of my life and meant a lot to me.

He died very suddenly just before Christmas. He had been dining at that classic hacks’ watering hole, the Garrick Club, but three days before he died.

The service was at St Mary Abbots Church in London’s Kensington. An amazing High Church Anglican establishment of great style and grace.

I’ve never before seen an Anglican priest in a skull cap. It turned out that Tony Howard had been a worshiper there for most of his life. His father had been a cleric there long ago. The place was laced with bells and smells together with a stylish choir and a fine organ.

The Congregation was full of hacks, mainly of the writing kind, though I spotted Paxo, and Newsnight’s Political Editor Michael Crick. Howard had worked on Reynolds News, the Observer, the New Statesman, the Times, and more. His journalistic life involved being employed by one organ or another (not to mention the Beeb and Channel 4) for more than fifty years.

The eulogy was given by the writer and journalist Robert Harris. He said more eloquently than I or anyone else could what the whole service was about. For Anthony Howard summed up an age, a long passage in the history of British politics and communication.

Harris’s eulogy has appeared nowhere else in print. It more than deserves to. It is the very summit of what a eulogy should be..few will ever better it. So I have taken the unusual step of putting it on our website and, even if you have never heard of Anthony Howard, please read it. It says so much about the human condition.

You can read the eulogy to Anthony Howard here.