suffering from a strain resulting from arthritis which requires immediate further treatment. It has been caused by the physical stress involved in rehearsal and performance of her role in Orpheus". Ferrier spent two months in University College Hospital. As a result, she missed her CBE investiture; the ribbon was brought to her at the hospital by a friend. Meanwhile, her sister found her a ground-floor apartment in St John's Wood, since she would no longer be able to negotiate the many stairs at Frognal Mansions. She moved to her new home in early April, but after only seven weeks was forced to return to hospital where, despite two further operations, her condition continued to deteriorate. Early in June she heard that she had been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the first female vocalist to receive this honour since Muriel Foster in 1914. In a letter to the secretary of the Society she wrote that this "unbelievable, wondrous news has done more than anything to make me feel so much better". This letter, dated 9 June, is probably the last that Ferrier signed herself. As she weakened she saw only her sister and a few very close friends, and, although there were short periods of respite, her decline was unremitting. She died at University College Hospital on 8 October 1953, aged 41; the date for which, while still hopeful of recovery, she had undertaken to sing Frederick Delius's A Mass of Life at the 1953 Leeds Festival. Ferrier was cremated a few days later, at Golders Green Crematorium, after a short private service. She left an estate worth £15,134, which her biographer Maurice Leonard observes was "not a fortune for a world-famous singer, even by the standards of the day". Assessment and legacy The news of Ferrier's death came as a considerable shock to the public. Although some in musical circles knew or suspected the truth, the myth had been preserved that her absence from the concert scene was temporary. The opera critic Rupert Christiansen, writing as the 50th anniversary of Ferrier's death approached, maintained that "no singer in this country has ever been more deeply loved, as much for the person she was as for the voice she uttered". Her death, he continued, "quite literally shattered the euphoria of the Coronation" (which had taken place on 2 June 1953). Ian Jack, editor of Granta, believed that