In most parts of the world, we have now supped so full of terrorist horrors that the death of 22 people in such a terrible way does not feel decisively worse than what has gone before. You can tell this by the rather pro forma things that politicians say to condemn the attacks. Yet again, the attack is described as ‘cowardly’. This is simply untrue: it must require immense, though repellent, courage to blow yourself up. The other word to avoid is ‘innocent’. It is a word naturally, and rightly, applied to children, but it carries the dangerous implication that some terror attacks might be aimed at the ‘guilty’, and therefore be more forgivable. The word ‘innocent’ is never applied to our police and armed forces, but they are innocent, and killing those who keep the peace is, if anything, worse for all of us than killing ‘innocent’ civilians.
Alexander Chancellor ended up living between a couple of Inigo Jones pavilions, so it was fitting that his memorial service on Tuesday took place in Inigo Jones’s church, St Paul’s Covent Garden.
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