When someone you love dies it’s so easy to over eulogise, even canonise, but I think, I can fairly say that James (along with his father) was the kindest man I have ever met. The difficulty with this comes when people take advantage of this or, are less deserving of it. I felt like a lioness constantly ready to pounce on anyone who even looked at him the wrong way.

Like Bronte’s Cathy, all my great miseries in this world have been James’ miseries and I have watched and felt each from the beginning.

A funeral is a complicated affair. I was completely taken aback when I was introduced to someone I had never met but who I knew had been unkind to James and I wanted to kill him. Hot tears bubbled like lava behind my eyes and I wanted to shoot fire out of my mouth.

I was so shocked upon hearing this person’s name and so unprepared that I ended up shaking his hand. But I dare say my face told him everything. What could I have said anyway? There’s just no point, and poor James would have been mortified. James was not only kind, he was bright and savvy and usually managed to filter out those less worthwhile. I often wonder if this level of pistols at dawn is felt by anyone else grieving?

I feel the same way about the tumor which killed him. V is definitely for vendetta. If cancer were a person I would not stop until I had smashed every bone in its body. There is no stone I would leave unturned in seeking him out. I would demand his head on a platter, like Salome.

For Henry Marsh CBE- For cutting that Almighty piece of shit out of my husband’s brain.