After his friend Peter, an RAF pilot, was killed in the Great War, Richard Hannay was present to watch him pulled from the wreckage of his plane. Peter left little in his Will except the Victoria Cross he was awarded for his self-scrifice, and his well-thumbed copy of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, from which Hannay read at the graveside.

Hannay records for posterity the words he read at Peter Pienaar’s graveside, from his friend’s own copy of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. Peter had modestly identified with Mr Standfast, but it was the passage where Mr Valiant-for-Truth is welcomed with triumphant joy to heaven that Hannay recited that day.

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