"My son did not die on July 22nd, 1945," his mother once wrote. "He just passed through the doorway of death to a life of further possibilities." George Aylwin was born on 26 February 1915, to Kathleen and Robert Hogg at Red Gables on Leyton Road in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. Robert Hogg was a successful merchant tailor in business with his brother in Hanover Square, London, and Aylwin was the youngest of a family of six children. The first memories are of an aureole of curls like a pale gold cloud about Aylwin's head; he loved to put on his brother's cricket cap and black school waistcoat, which looked ridiculously incongruous on him. He repudiated the idea of death at the age of four. He had been distributing drawings with great pride, and one of his brothers, to tease, said, "I suppose when you're dead you'll want us to frame them and stick them on the wall?" To which Aylwin replied in astonishment, "I shall never die, Stephen! When my body gets old and worn out, I shall go to God's land. He'll have the window open. He'll be all ready, and He'll pop me into a new body." Another time he was overheard saying to his sister, "If heaven isn't much nicer than earth, Rosemary, I shall ask God to let me come back."