In this year of the Golden Jubilee, when acts of commemoration for King George VI have occurred across the Commonwealth, we publish, at the suggestion of Rafal Heydel-Mankoo, Churchill’s moving and eloquent tribute from fifty years ago. “Churchill’s eulogy,” Rafal writes, “is one of the finest ever made.
His passage: ‘The King walked with death…’ is most moving and his closing homage to the new Queen is inspiring.” Most moving of all were Churchill’s words on his floral tribute to Britain’s wartime King, taken from those on the Victoria Cross: “For Valour.”
When the death of the King was announced to us yesterday morning there struck a deep and solemn note in our lives which, as it resounded far and wide, stilled the clatter and traffic of twentieth-century life in many lands, and made countless millions of human beings pause and look around them.
A new sense of values took, for the time being, possession of human minds, and mortal existence presented itself to so many at the same moment in its serenity and in its sorrow, in its splendour and in its pain, in its fortitude and in its suffering.
The King was greatly loved by all his peoples. He was respected as a man and as a prince far beyond the many realms over which he reigned. The simple dignity of his life, his manly virtues,
