Terry

It seems, just as the late, great Terry Jones’s spirit departs this earth, that it’s timely to reflect on other lives marred by cruel illnesses. 

As a child I remember my aunt showing me a shiny LP with a green & white cover. It was a recording made by the contralto Kathleen Ferrier. The memory has remained with me, not because I knew her singing voice nor her works (I was only eight) - her renditions of folksongs and popular ballads and the classical works of Bach, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar. It was more that I remember my aunt telling me Ferrier had died so young but had had an extraordinary voice. It seemed cruel to me, even though I was only a nipper, that she died aged only 41. My mother was that age, then, and I didn’t want to lose my mum. Jacqueline du Pre was also young, 42, when she died. I recall her energy when playing the cello but, struck down with multiple sclerosis, at the end she ‘...sat helplessly in a wheelchair, moon-faced and mute.’ Such a wicked illness to land on one so young who had been so robust when she played.

Julie Andrews famously had surgery which ruined her singing voice and Elton John’s voice deepened as a result of his throat procedure. We aren’t robbed of their lives but of their former art. Dean Ashton of West Ham made his England debut in Trinidad. But an injury continued to trouble him and he was forced to retire on December 11, 2009. He was only 23. His broken ankle and a further ligament problem meant an end to his football career came for him when he was far too young. 

Great academics like Iris Murdoch and Stephen Hawking both lost their abilities in a savage fashion. She - a great thinker and writer - lost her mind to Alzheimers and he lost the use of his body to sclerosis (but defied medical science and lived much longer than his first prognosis allowed.)Especially for Murdoch, having been a thinker, Alzheimers must have been especially hard for those around her when her thoughts began to deteriorate. 

Jack Hawkins, the actor, had a rich speaking voice but had treatment for a secondary condition of the larynx, which was probably cancer. The operation deprived him of his natural voice, but with the help of a therapist, he developed a new “voice” and acted in half a dozen more films afterwards. He lost his commanding speaking voice and died 7 years after his diagnosis of cancer. Joan Plowright, although older than many of the aforementioned, lost her sight in the late 2000s, cannot act now and needs a live in carer in her own home. In 2014, she officially announced her retirement because she had become completely blind. 

And today we learn how Terry Jones, director of fantastic Python films such as ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ and ‘The Life of Brian’, has succumbed to a particularly brutal form of dementia. He loved words and was so articulate with them. It seems especially sad that he was robbed of his ability to use language as he suffered from a form of frontotemporal dementia. It impairs the ability to speak and communicate. The very things which made him great and endeared him to many.

He will be missed.