"De Mortuis...

...nil nisi bonum." That, we were told, was the golden rule when speaking of the newly dead. They weren't exactly in any decent position to rebut or refute any ill or unkind words, so it was deemed only fair not to say what may well have been on anyone's mind about the fellow.

May well have been a complete basket-case, but best not to harp too much on that tune; refer rather to the deceased as 'mildly eccentric not perhaps completely at ease in the society of others.' Not an untruth, but neither the full picture. A satisfactory code among friends.

It was though dear Harold Laski who so cleverly picked up on where that might lead: 'De mortuis nil nisi bunkum' indeed. Paeans of praise for a right shafter, or charged glasses raised in tribute to an utter stinker.

Better though perhaps that rank hypocrisy than the all too modern habit of the relentless scribing of positive pen-portraits for all deceased and sundry, but most especially for the all too many young people who die so needlessly and early.

I do not want to read that Charlie was well-liked by all in school, eternally cheerful and diligent in work and play. I do not want to be told that Angie was an angel who touched the lives of all she met.

They may well have been just so. But equally they might have been appalling little monsters who terrified their families and terrorised their neighbourhoods.

The only desperate thing that matters now is that they have died, and that death is a horror to those who love them - God too - saints in the making or budding little devils alike.