“If Maisie had been born today, it would have been a city that would have welcomed her with open arms. How can I be so sure of that? Because at the age of sixty-two, when most people are preparing for retirement, Maisie enrolled at Bristol University, and three years later graduated with a first-class honors degree. She remains to this day the only member of the Clifton family to have managed that distinction. Imagine what she might have achieved if she had been born a generation later.

“My mother was a regular churchgoer until the day she died, and I once asked her if she thought she’d go to heaven. ‘I certainly hope so,’ she told me, ‘as I need to have a word with St. Peter, St. Paul and our Lord.’ You will not be surprised to hear that I asked her what she intended to say to them. ‘I shall point out to St. Peter that none of the women who were close to our Lord ever denied him, let alone three times. Typical man.’ This time the laughter was sustained. Harry, now feeling in control of his audience, didn’t continue until he had complete silence. ‘And when it comes to St. Paul,’ Maisie said, ‘I shall ask him why it took him so long to get the message.’ And our Lord? I asked her. ‘If you are the son of God, could you please point out to the Almighty that the world would be a far better place if there had only been one religion, because then we could have all sung from the same hymn sheet.’” Harry had never experienced applause in a church before, and he knew it would have delighted his mother.

“When someone close to you dies, you remember all the things you wished you’d said and it’s suddenly too late to say. I wish I’d understood, appreciated and been fully aware of the sacrifices my mother made, which have allowed me to live such a privileged life, a life I fear I sometimes take for granted. When I first went to St. Bede’s, dressed in my smart navy blazer and long gray trousers, we took the tram from Chapel Street, and I never understood why we got off a few hundred yards from the school. It was because my mother didn’t want the other boys to see her. She thought I would be ashamed of her.