Thursday 9th May 2013

Every known young architect attended in sharp suits and thin ties. The chapel at Golders Green was packed. Standing room only, but Dame Maggi Hambling was seated. Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanian ceramicist, came up from his north London home. He said he had never before been further than Hampstead on the Northern line. The young blades were crowded at the back, ready to thrust forward, as it were. There was a picture of some of them, in swimwear at the Côte, in the order of service. Bruno France Bruno played the piano and a lady sang. There were three tributes, one by Guinevere Pelham. That was the ceremony. A single bunch of white daffodils lay on the coffin. The music was Debussy, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Charles Ives. Words and music were spun into a fine, spare shape just as Virgil made a building and was curiously in his being. So art and life were tempered into one at the end.

Outside on the lawn was social conversation of the long-time-no-see kind usual at funerals. Mr Pelham said it was impossible to tell, at dinners, who was an item and who not. He and Guinevere were bemused.

Then on to the wake at Virgil’s office. Go-go boys (or that type) but with clothes on, had been hired as waiters. Virgil used to do this if he had an office party. Champagne glasses were lined up on a black cloth.  High-honed canapés were offered. It was as if nothing had happened. The office itself of course is Virgil’s vision – an extraordinary transformation of an ordinary space into a floating, airy haven. He could not have been more there yet more absent.

But the office will go on. I consulted some of the young bucks. They’ll keep it going. The name goes on.