Obituary: John McCain

EVERY inch of John McCain’s body shouted endurance. The brisk, slightly swinging walk, the stiffly held arms, the tight shoulders and clenched smile, all carried the mark of Vietnam like one scar. His arms were stiff because they had been broken when he fell out of the sky in his bomber, then yanked up by ropes in prison day after day. Released from the “Hanoi Hilton”, after five and a half years of sporadic torture and solitary confinement, he could no longer reach up to comb his hair. His hair itself had turned white, though he was only in his 30s. He walked with something like a strut because his damaged knees had hardly any cartilage left. Not that this stopped him hiking for miles through the Grand Canyon and the desert hills of Arizona, the stunningly beautiful piece of America that he represented in Congress for more than 30 years. The swell of his chest was pride in what he felt he had achieved there.