Other people's impressions may well have differed from mine, but
I switched off after the memorial broadcast on Sunday night with a keen sense of disappointment. Not, of course, everything was wrong with it, but so much was. It was a great misfortune that the Archbishop of Canterbury was ill, but the idea of introducing a contribution by him (which might well have served as the principal address) as a kind of uncovenanted mercy before the actual service began at all did not seem happy. The chanting of the twenty-third Psalm was notable, and Wesley's hymn " Let saints on earth in concert sing" well deserved its place. But everyone but the B.B.C. seemed to know that one of the King's two favourite hymns was "Abide with Me." Was there no room for that ? Nor, on the first Sunday of the new Queen's reign, for the Prayer for the Queen's Majesty, which has not been heard-in England for fifty years ? For the rest, the special prayers were adequate but uninspired; the Archbishop of York, with the programme evi- dently falling behind schedule, gave his address at a pace too fast to be impressive; the reading of the lessons was deplorable —mannered and pompous, two unforgivable sins. Not much of this was the B.B.C.'s fault, but the general result left one think- ing sadly what might have been.
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