Peter Macleod Campbell died on 10 August 2024 at the age of 80. After Sandhurst he joined the Royal Horse Artillery, flying helicopters, and was later an aviation consultant. Sir Michael Morpurgo (GL 1957-62) spoke at the Service of Thanksgiving for Peter’s life. An abbreviated version was published in the Autumn 2024 OKS Magazine. This is Michael's full, un-edited speech. 

I speak today of Peter as I knew him, as I cared for him, like a brother.

I would have told Peter, had he been here, that good friends, oldest friends, best friends, dear friends, lifetime friends, shouldn’t go first. It leaves us feeling alone in the world, left behind, even abandoned. And it’s worse of course when the passing is sudden, as Peter’s was. As Katherine, and Amanda, Sam and Chloe, Luca and Aryo, know only too well.

Words can be a comfort, and I hope mine will be. But the real comfort is and will be in the memories each of us will have, of a much adored husband, or beloved father or loving grandfather, loyal colleague, dear friend, whose warmth and sense of fun and companionship enriched all our lives, whose smile and laugh warmed our hearts.

And comfort there will be surely in music too, especially choral music, the music that he and Katherine shared with so many, and shared with me too. The music in this church at their wedding over two decades ago, much of it echoed today, will be long remembered by everyone who was here, as will the music we hear today. Voices raised together in praise and thanksgiving, in sorrow or in joy, bring us all together, lift our spirits, touch our hearts, as nothing else can.

Well, almost nothing else. After their wedding that day, as many here will recall, Peter organised a happening that took us all by surprise. I remember well that I had noticed him anxiously checking his watch after the service outside the church, as we were all milling about in our hats in our finery, as the photographs were being taken, and then again checking his watch as he tried, rather desperately I thought, to shepherd us down to the garden for the reception and the speeches.

His speech was typically Peter, full of fun, spoken from the heart, touching. But there were serious moments, personal moments, moving moments, especially when he mentioned how sad it was that Katherine’s beloved father, having passed away, was not there to be with his daughter on this her wedding day.

And then, rather mysteriously, he told us all to look up, and he pointed to the sky. It was a strange thing to say, so we were all intrigued enough to do exactly as he had said. Timed and planned to perfection it had been, on his watch, as he had ushered us hurriedly though the photographs and down to the reception. We all had a glass in hand by the time he had arranged it to happen. I have never forgotten the moment. Out of the clouds at that moment came a Spitfire, with that familiar growl of the engine, down towards us it came, roaring over our heads, then soaring up high.

Katherine’s beloved father, Sholto Douglas, Baron Douglas of Kirtleside as he became had played a vital role in RAF Fighter Command during the Second World War, as many here will know, and subsequently became Marshal of the RAF. It was a breathlessly beautiful moment, an inspired gesture of love and kindness, that Peter had created and meticulously arranged, a ‘Peter’ moment never to be forgotten.

As it happens, he and Peter had been in the same regiment, 1st Royal Horse Artillery, Katharine’s father joining the Royal Flying Corps at the beginning of WW1, and Peter going on to fly helicopters, both taking to the air to serve their country. In fact they were also connected, more distantly it should be said, to ancient Scottish royalty, to Robert the Bruce. And of course they had a love of Katharine in common too.

To witness that kind of empathy, of thoughtful love was moving beyond belief. It was wonderful a few years later to be there to see again how much affection and respect there was for Peter out there, in friends and family alike. We were at his sixtieth birthday celebration, I think it was, that Katharine had laid on secretly for Peter to be there at a service in Salisbury Cathedral, which was of course full of wondrous singing. But then, at the end of the service, the organist gave him and all of us there, a thunderous rendering of Happy Birthday to You! With Katherine and Peter music really was ‘the food of love’ indeed.

I think I might have been there ‘the day the music played’ for Peter ‘a long long time ago .We were in our first week at school together at The King’s School Canterbury. It was in the cathedral there, in our first days as new boys, at the first choir practice of the school year that music brought us together. Before the rugby. Important to remember that, music before rugby. I’ll come to rugby later.

It was 1957. I was 13, so was he. We had been chosen for the choir, because we both had the voices of angels - and we both looked like angels then too! We had the great good fortune to have a genius of a choir master called Edred Wright.

So, by pure chance we found ourselves at choir practice always sat next to one another as trebles. Peter could read music, had perfect pitch, and a wonderful voice. I could sing well enough, but I had none of these talents. I managed to hold my own only by following Peter. We sat side by side in the choir for five years, at choir practice down in the Norman Undercroft each week on Friday evenings, then on Sundays we’d be up in the glorious Choir of the cathedral, our school chapel, singing our hymns and arias, our anthems and responses and psalms.

Peter was talented enough to be selected to sing a solo sometimes, as a treble and then later as a bass. Then on our last Sunday service before we left school, out of our choir master’s kindness of heart to me I think, we both got to sing a duet. It was the last time we sang together, but all our lives, for Peter and for me, the music never died. That’s why it’s so good to have great music here today, to remind us that music never dies.

And we had rugby too, as well as music, to cement our friendship. Peter played flyhalf in the same School Under 14 Team as I did, in 1957 this was, and we won every match we played. I mean we were good! He was fast, fast and brave, a phenomenal athlete. He could swerve for England, he could sell dummies for Scotland, he could kick, he could tackle. I was lucky enough to be his Inside Centre, so next to him in a formidable three-quarter line. It was Peter Campbell - if he didn’t jink his own way through - who passed me the ball, who so often sent me and others over the line to score countless tries, and made us look even better than we were.

We played together every season after that, ending up side by side in 1961 in a remarkable 1st XV, in which Peter was a star. I lived in his glow on the rugby field.

Neither of us, it has to be said, was brilliant academically. So we shared that too. But both of us were keen enough cadets in the school Combined Cadet Force. He was always the smarter of the two of us, always elegant he was, and effortlessly it seemed to me. We went on a bizarre exercise together once, I remember. We were dropped off somewhere in the West Country, tasked with having to find our way back to Canterbury with no food, no maps, no resources. They called it ‘an initiative test.’ A coping exercise you could call it. We slept rough in barns, hitched, scrumped apples, begged sandwiches and bus rides. No idea how we got back. We loved the fun of it, the adventure. We wanted more of the same.

We became like brothers in those years. So when our school days were about to end in 1962 we both made a pact and decided that we should join the army together, go to Sandhurst, have more adventures. It was a spur of the moment decision, not really thought through, the kind of decision you make when you’re 17. But we knew we both looked really good in uniform, and we knew we could play rugby in the army.

It has to be said that Sandhurst and the army took us very much in different directions. We were in different Colleges at Sandhurst, and so saw little of each other. I lasted only a year or so, Peter stayed the whole course, two years in those days, and made the army his career, and a very successful career too. I left to get married and go to university, and go into teaching. We each took a different course. So we came to a parting of the ways, temporarily, Peter serving often abroad, seeing one another rarely. But we always stayed in touch.

Peter had already met Clare, my wife, and approved of my choice. He came to see us in our home from time to time - we had a young family by now. He got to know our children, became a godfather of one. I followed his fortunes, he followed mine, at a distance, but we met often enough to sustain and renew our friendship, to refresh our memories, keep them alive. You have to do that with memories, keep them alive.

By this time, he had moved here to Northington with Katharine. He loved this place, this church. He was a great support to the church in so many ways, donating and arranging the kneelers, helping to establish the bell ringing chamber, writing the Visitor’s Guide - he was a bit of a writer too. And please do take a copy of his Guide as you leave. Peter would like that.

On one of his many visits to see us when we came to live in Devon that there was a happening. Happenings happened around Peter. Our house caught fire. He was the one who first noticed the sparks from our sitting room fire flying up out of the chimney and catching the thatch. He and I and the Fire Brigade did all we could, but we lost half the house, not before Peter had fallen and broken his arm in the effort to raise a ladder to douse the early flames. He stayed to be with us afterwards, helped tidy up, be with us and comfort us. He was like that. A true friend when it mattered.

In the decades of growing old, then older, and not always wiser, we’d meet from time to time, and reminisce and chart each other’s journeys through life. We even lost our hair together, I mean in time with one another, synchronised hair loss, you could call it. We didn’t play rugby any more but each in his own way went on singing, Peter in choirs with Katherine, me with a folk group and in the bath, where I could be heard singing solos at last! We’d meet, the four of us, Katherine, Peter, Clare and I, from time to time, here or in Devon, saw one another through our ups and downs, as dear friends do.

And now I find myself here with you all, all his family and friends, remembering Peter as he was, remembering how much his friendship meant to each of us. And I know how many here feel as I do today that we have lost a cherished friend, a comrade on our life’s journey, a lovely man, full of kindness, and we are bereft, Katherine and the family, most of all.

But let us not be downhearted. He wouldn’t have wanted that. We can always hold him in our hearts, keep in touch with him through our memories. Till we meet again. Thank you for the music, the tries, the moments and the happenings. Thank you for the days, dear Peter, all the months and the years. We shall treasure them as we shall treasure you.

Bless your heart, Peter.