On Saturday 7 earlier this month a cheerful memorial service was held at Great St Mary’s, the Cambridge University church in honour of Michael Kuczynski, the distinguished Peruvian economist. Great St Mary’s is  at the heart of one of the world’s great institutions of learning and the nave was packed with 500 well-known academics and friends saying farewell to Michael, an Emeritus Fellow and longtime Director of Studies at Pembroke, a leading college among the couple of dozen which form the backbone of the university.

A full chamber orchestra, a string quartet and a world-ranking choir as well as the full power church organ provided Bach, Brahms, Foure and others between speeches and recounted memories of Michael’s distinguished contributions to Keynesian economics to generations of students.  His elegantly Anglo peruvian eccentricities included How to mix a properly Keynesian Martini shaken as it were into the  Kuczynski course in abstract algebraics. Older students recalled for the congregation finding a lost cat and a grand piano under mountains of ancient essays and theses.

John Hemming, an Oxford man and contemporary there of Pedro Pablo, Michael’s older brother tells Fredy Cooper and me how The Master of Pembroke read out an account from Pedro Pablo of Michael’s teenage attempt to escape their grim cold harsh boarding school in the North of England.

PPK himself was prohibited by one of today’s pathetic government from attending his brother’s memorial service.  Or anywhere else. His doctors, for instance, at the Mayo Clinic in New York or even more than a mile or two from his house in San Isidro.

In the case of the memorial to Michael he was able, thanks to Cambridge, able to listen from his home in San Isidro to a livestream from Great St Mary’s 6,000 miles away.

Michael had died in Lima three months earlier from a sudden stroke. He had spent all of his holidays in Lima keeping his older brother company since Pedro Pablo was kicked out eight years ago of the presidency in 2018 in a shameful backstab coup. The main coupster, the disgusting Viscarra, is today in jail for embezzling and taking bribes. 

No charges against PPK have been brought by teams of crooked Fiscales. He has been under effective house arrest for the past eight years for having allowed himself to be couped and silenced by cheapo backstreet politicians some of whom are today in jail and others in power in the presidency and the Congress which has been a shambles since.

Michael was cremated in Lima. Pedro Pablo, with friends and family, were at least allowed by the authorities to attend the funeral in La Molina.

Some months ago PPK had completed the paperwork to be permitted to travel to New York and the Mayo Clinic. At the airport the emigration officials prevented him, under illegal orders from a ‘premier’ called Arana, a lawyer, from boarding the plane.

PPK is 87 and has not been allowed to see his wife Nancy, stuck in Wisconsin for eight years.  Many Peruvianns will be glad to know Michael Kuczynski was treated with a sad yet good cheer and honour where, it seems, it matters.

John Hemming tells me that after the splendid Anglican memorial service at Great St Mary’s everyone was invited to the ancient lawns and buildings of Pembroke to champagne and canapes.  That, one feels, is the way to treat distinguished public servants like the hermanos Kuczynski.