The widower of murdered MP Jo Cox gave a powerful tribute to his wife in front of thousands who gathered in Trafalgar Square to celebrate her life.
The late Labour politician's husband Brendan Cox choked back tears during his eight-minute speech to the crowd during an emotion-charged vigil on what would have been the her 42nd birthday.
Mr Cox and their children - three-year-old daughter Lejla and son Cuillin, five – had travelled in their houseboat along the River Thames for the memorial service.
Addressing the crowd, he said: "Thank you for the love that you have poured on our family since our world collapsed on Thursday.
"Thank you to Jo's amazing friends, and friends of friends, and even complete strangers who have managed, despite your own grief, to organise all of this in less than a week.
"As amazing and deeply touching as all of this is, I wish I wasn't here today. Not because I'm ungrateful to the organisers and you all for coming, but because of course I'd rather be with Jo.
"But I wanted to come and show my gratitude and that of all of our family.
"Your support and love has helped us all and I wanted our children to see what their mum meant to all of you. I know that they will remember today."
Echoing his sister-in-law's words earlier this week, he said his wife had "just wanted people to be happy and for the world to be a fairer place".
He said: "That's where her politics came from, not from the libraries of Cambridge or any theoretical attachment to a narrow ideology but from the streets of Batley and her own empathy. When she saw pain she wanted to do all that she could to alleviate it."
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Mr Cox said his wife had lived her life to the full and that she would have spent her 42nd birthday "bashing around the streets of her home town trying to convince people Britain was stronger in Europe."
Jo Cox Commemoration
He told those gathered: "She was a mountain climber, a runner, a cyclist, an avid reader, an awful cook, a swimmer, a great exaggerator, a wild food forager, a middle lane driver, a log carrier, a ball of energy and determination, and above all else she was a mum. She was the best mum that any child could wish for. And wish we do, to have her back in our lives."
He said he had spoken with his children every day since last Thursday about the things they will miss and memories they will forever cherish.
"We try to remember not how cruelly she has been taken from us, but how unbelievably lucky we were to have her in our lives for so long," he said.
