John Julius Norwich - My father's death (91/136)

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John Julius Norwich (1929-2018) was an English popular historian, travel writer and television personality. He is the author of histories of Norman Sicily, the Republic of Venice, the Byzantine Empire and 'The Popes: A History'. [Listener: Christopher Sykes]
TRANSCRIPT: [CS] Your father died quite young?
He died very young, indeed, yes. He died at sea. He was on his way, on holiday, to stay with a friend in Jamaica, and he got a sudden very, very, very bad haemorrhage at sea, and the ship put into Vigo in Spain, by which time he was dead. And my mother was clearly in a terrible way about it. He'd been ill for a long time, but he… I think he knew he was dying, but we didn't, he never told us. And I was working at the Foreign Office at about 5 o'clock one afternoon and the telephone rang and it was my mother saying, 'Darling, it's the worst.' And I sort of suspected what that must mean, but she said, 'Papa's dead and now I'm in Vigo with…' - he's been put in this sort of huge Spanish, wildly-carved Baroque coffin - 'and I've got to get him to London. Can you arrange for a plane to come and pick us up?'
And I managed to find some sort of private air company that did this sort of thing. But the sad thing was, they said, 'Yes, we could do it, all right.' And I said, 'Good, well, I'll… you know, where are you taking off from? I'll be there.' And they said, 'I'm afraid we won't have room for you and a body and a heavy coffin and your mother. We can't take anybody more.' So I couldn't go to her, as I wanted to, and I had to wait till she got back to London. But, anyway, there it was. And she was in a very bad way for about a year and drank too much, and it was all rather awful and embarrassing, and I was afraid she'd never get over it. But she did. She got over it very, very well in the end and went on for another quarter of a century. I mean, she was actually a widow longer than she was a wife and lived to be 94.