Cicely Saunders in March 2005, four months before she died at St Christopher’s Hospice, where she was already an in-patient. Credit: David Clark. All rights reserved.
One month before the Beatles “All You Need is Love” rocketed to the top of the British pop charts in the summer of 1967, a new institution called St Christopher’s Hospice opened in quieter fashion in the London suburb of Sydenham. It was the first of its kind in the world. The founder of the hospice was a pioneering doctor, nurse and social worker called Cicely Saunders, and her new project was also a work of love—though her musical tastes lay more with Ralph Vaughan Williams than Lennon and McCartney.
