Evening Standard comment: A time to remember the victims of Grenfell fire; Chelsea - from flowers... to FA Cup winners

On the morning of June 14 last year, in bright early-summer sunshine just like today’s, London woke up to the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire.

There was huge shock and understandable anger.

How, people asked, could something like this happen in the middle of one of the richest and most advanced cities in the world? Who had died? How could we help their families? What led what should have been a small, containable blaze to race though a tower that had been so recently refurbished, and which clearly ought to have been safe? What needed to be done to stop anything like it happening again? And what about the emergency services, who risked their lives on the night? Is there anything more they could have done?

Already, less than a year on, we have answers to some of these important questions.

We know that the cladding used on the building was central to the catastrophe.

We know, too, that it was fitted badly, with gaps inside where there should have been fire barriers, which allowed flames to spread.

Last week brought a promise from the Government to fund the cost of removing dangerous cladding from other buildings — and a technical report which suggested that, fitted correctly, it could be safe.

But in all this there was a different, much more human, question that needed to be answered, too: how best could the lives of the 71 people who died be remembered?

In the urgent and necessary work to find technical answers to the cause of the catastrophe, there was always a risk that their stories would be brushed aside.

So the Grenfell Inquiry deserves much credit for making sure that this is not the case. Today begins the start of what is likely to be a fortnight of commemoration hearings.

Relatives will talk about those they have lost for as long as they feel they need to. It will be an emotional time, speaking in public about the most private pain and grief.

We can only imagine how difficult they may find it. But it will also be an important moment, a pause for thought and recollection, putting their stories on the official record, never to be lost.

Past inquiries into disasters and controversial events — such as Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday — did, in the end, bring a sort of justice through their reports.

But along the way the relatives of those involved sometimes felt overlooked.

The Grenfell Inquiry is doing things in a different and better way. Of all the things it can achieve, putting the memory of those who died at the centre of its work is a kind of justice.

Chelsea: from flowers...

Only Britain could take a flower show, stage it in the heart of the capital and turn it into a national event.

Does any other country have ticket touts offering to get people in to an annual display of unique petunias and fern fronds, a celebration of cacti?

The Chelsea Flower Show keeps changing and growing — this year one garden takes inspiration from a refugee camp in Iraq, and another underwater garden shows the impact of plastic pollution on our oceans — but amid all the celebrity visits and TV cameras it is still a place for plant lovers.

If you get in, there can be a moment when you realise that you will never grow anything quite so perfect, or have a show garden that neat: but it is a joyous green escape from the pressures of city life.

Long may Chelsea continue to bloom.

...to football’s winners

It was a very London win: a global team owned by a Russian, a penalty scored by a Belgian, set up by a pass from a Spaniard, led by an Italian manager and an English captain.

Chelsea won the FA Cup on Saturday, as they deserved to — adding it to the Premier League title that Antonio Conte won last year, for a club that has won 15 major trophies in 15 years.

What next? As Mr Conte, Jose Mourinho and others have discovered to their cost, victories alone do not bring stability at Chelsea.

But that’s what makes watching them play such a thrilling ride.