Best Maker of Hand Carved Memorials in an Indigenous Material
Hannah Wessel of Stoneletters Fergus Wessel, founder of Stoneletters, is a master of his craft, and provides a personal, sensitive service for bereaved families. He operates from his workshop in the Cotswolds with his small team, and prospective clients are encouraged to go and meet him there to see his work up close and discuss […]
Best Internet Bereavement Resource
Jonathan Davies of MuchLoved.com MuchLoved, the UK’s best and most ethical memorial website, is ten years old this year, and has facilitated more than £25 million of donations to charities. The award celebrates these achievements together with the unpaid input of co-founder Andy Daniels. Andy Daniels, who founded MuchLoved.com with Jonathan Davies, and is the […]
Continuing bonds
From the ever-excellent Kenny Farquharson’s latest column in The Times: There were just two drinkers at the bar when I walked in. Once they had established I was not from “the social” they were warm and engaging. One stood nursing a whisky under a sign that said “Nicky’s Corner”. Would you happen to be Nicky, […]
How to stay alive after you’re dead
Posted by Thomas Staley “All living things seek to perpetuate themselves into the future, but humans seek to perpetuate themselves forever. This seeking – this will to ‘immortality’ – is the foundation of human achievement; it is the wellspring of religion, the muse of philosophy, the architect of our cities and the impulse behind the […]
Over to you!
We recently wrote to BBC R4’s Last Word programme suggesting they include more ordinary people – local heroes, we called them – here. We said: “The stories of those of our fellow-citizens who have lived and struggled and won some and lost some are moving and inspiring. All priests and funeral celebrants know this, […]
Let’s hear it for our local heroes
Friday’s Times had an article about Matthew Bannister of BBC R4’s obits programme Last Word (Fridays at 4.00 pm). You listen to it? Of course you do. Who doesn’t? Here’s what the article said: When Bannister, who had been a high-profile radio presenter and media executive for many years, was asked by Mark Damazer, controller […]
Adopt a grave
Your average grave is visited for an average of around 15 years. After that, neglect can leave it looking unloved and anonymous, creating exactly the opposite effect to the one intended. There are those who see a cemetery as a monument to the vanity of human wishes. I’m one of them. Remembrance all too quickly […]
Remembering the dead
Older readers will recall that, by the 1970s, observance of the two minutes’ silence on 11/11 had declined in the civilian sphere to such an extent that a great many people paid no heed to it whatever and carried on doing whatever they were doing. There’s been a big revival of observance in recent years. In an article in […]
Lifting the spirits
Posted by Kitty Perry When I was a child in the 60s, not a lot happened on 31st October. Casting my mind back and thinking really hard, the only thing I can remember doing is bobbing for apples. Which I did once at a friend’s birthday party. Come to think of it, I’m not even […]
Always alive
“I met the poet James Turner in my twenties: no one reads him now, yet to me he is always alive … You too must have people like that in your lives, people who are not alive in the physical sense, but remain alive in some spiritual way, which you retain in your head, in […]
