AN early-morning email from my friend David, who lives in a wooded hamlet in the Catskills. ‘Poured myself a glass of good red wine. Turned the lights down and the volume up, and listened to Leonard Bernstein conducting Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. A fitting end to Memorial Day.’
I’d forgotten it was Memorial Day in America. The May bank holiday in England, traditionally Whit Monday, marks the day after Pentecost, rather than commemorating the war dead of the country’s wars. My lasting memory of the American holiday was of Old Man Piggott, who dressed in a First World War uniform
