THE GLORIES OF AUTUMN resonated especially today, All Saints’ Day, as I drove over to Macclesfield to preside at the Funeral Thanksgiving for an old friend I admired very much indeed. Choosing what to say about Edward, with limited space and time, required intense focus because his life was a wholly rich life and the stories about him glad stories, and many. A patriarch; dearly loved husband (widowed these past six years), father of six girls, grandfather, hugely appreciated friend. Edward left his degree studies at Cambridge early to take up a wartime officer’s commission. Captured, and held prisoner of war for four and a half years, many another would have been utterly defeated. Not Edward. He studied for accountancy exams in a POW environment cold enough frequently to freeze the ink in his pen. And he continued to shine into his 90s, until the colours of autumn glowed in as well as around him. I shall think of Edward, and of his Rosalind, next time I sing “For all the saints …”