A life well lived.

What have Dan Dare and the Samaritans in common? What do you mean - who's Dan Dare? He was the British equivalent of Buck Rogers - a sci-fi comic-book hero who featured in The Eagle, a comic which first appeared in the 1950s, and which continued more or less unbroken for the next 40-odd years. So what's the connection? Well, one of the founding fathers of The Eagle was Chad Varah, who also was the man who founded the Samaritans. He was a clergyman, and so incensed was he when, early in his career, he found himself officiating at the funeral of a young teenage girl who had committed suicide because she thought that her periods starting was an indication that she had contracted some shameful disease, that he determined that there should always be somewhere for people like her to turn to for advice and support. One of life's unsung heroes was Chad Varah, who died last week, at the age of 95.