Kiwi death rites
From an article in Stuff.co.nz: New Zealanders may be shy and reserved, but we hold long, personalised funerals for our loved ones, and show far more emotion than Norwegians, Swedes, English and Scots. Our funerals lean towards the American style, where everything – down to the cup of tea and biscuits afterwards – is organised […]
Philosophy and death
Posted by Vale Yale University is starting to experiment with free open access video based learning. One of the courses it’s offering is run by Shelley Kagan who is Clark Professor of Philosophy at the University. It’s all about death. This is the course introduction: There is one thing I can be sure of: I […]
Thank God for secularism
Posted by our religious correspondent, Richard Rawlinson RR writes: I had planned to discuss funerals in Islamic cultures, but concluded anyone interested could find such information elsewhere. See link to 10 Muslim Funeral Traditions here: Instead, I want to address concerns about Islam’s conflict with faith-tolerating, secular society. This is not about funerals per se, […]
200 years since our PM was shot
It’s quite a year for anniversaries from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. It’s also a year when deaths are commemorated from Captain Scott’s failed mission to the South Pole in 1912 to the sinking of the Titanic in the same year. Less well known is that 2012 […]
Norfolk Funerals
Norfolk Funerals, which opened recently, is the UK’s first and only not-for-profit funeral director. It is a charity, based in Norwich, and it offers funerals at cost price for all merchandise plus a fee to cover overheads, running costs and the wages of its employees. Eyebrows have been raised. What’s going on here? Why would […]
We Believe
A new website has just hit the scene: CommunityFunerals.org.uk. It seeks to develop the concept of a not-for profit community funeral service, and presents for consideration four models of what it calls a Community Funeral Society (CFS). It hopes to grow the idea organically by inviting feedback from its readers, then incorporating their ideas. It’s a […]
Thoughts of a funeral-goer
Posted by Lyra Mollington Nearly twelve years ago, I was with my grandchildren in the queue for the newly opened London Eye when we saw an elderly man collapse. Paramedics arrived quickly but by the time the man was lifted onto a stretcher, a blanket had been pulled over his head. It took […]
Communityfunerals.org.uk
We apologise for pulling the post on CommunityFunerals.org.uk without explanation. The website came under sustained and relentless attack from YouKnowWho. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. At this moment, 23 men in oily overalls and bearing large spanners are working round the clock, without breaks, to restore the site. All […]
Alexander McQueen: a commentary on death and decay
Phoebe Hoare, who’s put some really good things our way, suggests it’s time we did something on Alexander McQueen, the fashion designer. She’s quite right. It’s not as if his work does not dwell and brood on death, dying, mortality and moral blackness. Before becoming a student at Central St Martin’s, McQueen cut his teeth […]
To Know Him Is To Love Him
A bit of funerary scholarship from the sagacious Vale Of borderline relevance only to funeralists, perhaps – but the title of the song was taken by Phil Spector, who produced it, from the inscription on his father’s headstone. It’s unlikely that the same words will adorn Phil’s. Older readers will enjoy the nostalgia jolt produced […]
