A beautiful turn of phrase from the author’s letters with Lady Mary Lygon, in reference to the death of Lord Marchmain (Hubert), the Flyte family patriarch, at the end of his masterpiece Brideshead Revisited:

“I believe that everyone in his (or her) life has the moment when he is open to Divine Grace. It’s there, of course, for the asking all the time, but human lives are so planned that usually there’s a particular time — sometimes, like Hubert, on his deathbed — when all resistance is down and Grace can come flooding in.”

The ending in question, which could not possibly…

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