Death
In the autumn of 1993 Johnston undertook a series of UK theatre tours, entertaining live audiences as a raconteur. On the morning of 2 December 1993, whilst in a taxi going to Paddington station en route to Bristol, he suffered a massive heart attack. The taxi driver drove him straight to the nearest Maida Vale hospital where he was revived, after a cardiac arrest. He was transferred to St Mary's Hospital, Paddington where he remained until 14 December. He was then transferred to the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers until he was discharged on 23 December. He was then re-admitted to hospital on 4 January when his health deteriorated again.
Brian Johnston died on the morning of 5 January 1994, at the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers in Marylebone, London. The Daily Telegraph described him as "the greatest natural broadcaster of them all" and John Major, the contemporaneous British Prime Minister and cricket fan, said that "Summers simply won't be the same without him". A memorial service was held in a packed Westminster Abbey on 16 May 1994 with over 2,000 people present.
Read more about this topic: Brian Johnston
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“We achieve “active” mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“You’re very beautiful. So beautiful I’m going to make you immortal. Like Kharis, you will live forever. What I can do for you I can also do for myself. Neither time nor death can touch us. You and I together for eternity here in the temple of Karnak. You shall be my high priestess.”
—Griffin Jay, Maxwell Shane (1905–1983)