Funerals
The architects redesigning death
Unesco doesn’t hand out world-heritage status to absences, but if it did, there would be memorials all over the western…
The depressing rise of ‘direct cremations’
Twenty per cent of last year’s funerals in Britain were direct cremations – up from 14 per cent in 2020.…
Death comes to the Chelsea Flower Show
It’s a matter of life and death at the Chelsea Flower Show this year. No murders are planned as far…
Letters: Donald Trump’s messiah complex
He’s not the messiah Sir: To Freddy Gray’s meticulous dissection of Trumpian chaos theory (‘Shock tactics’, 12 April) I would…
Keep fun out of funerals
There are two untraditional ways to take your leave of this world in Britain. The bleaker is the ‘direct cremation’…
A miracle beckons: Phantom Limb, by Chris Kohler, reviewed
When a severed hand, buried in the 17th century, is accidently unearthed, it proves to have magical powers. Will its discovery propel the local church minister to stardom?
Death was everywhere for the Victorians, but it was never commonplace
In a society obsessed with the trappings of grief, funerals were often elaborate occasions, with commemorative medals struck and strict rules applied to the period of mourning
Familiar and strange
Each story circles around events both big and small, such as lunch at a simple trattoria, a birthday party, a summer holiday or the funeral of a friend
The flirt at the funeral
Here is a rare dud from the usually reliable Deborah Moggach. Her protagonist, Pru, finds herself alone at 69 after…
Good grief
A proper funeral is a great comfort
The pagan rites of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg succumbed to cancer, #RestInPower immediately trended. The ACLU, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, actress Reese Witherspoon and the ostensibly…
Who deserves a funeral?
No one would argue that Rep. John Lewis doesn’t deserve a proper memorial. He was a civil rights icon and…
Remember when Joe Biden gave a eulogy for Strom Thurmond?
Biden did not attend the private funeral and burial of George Floyd today. Instead, Biden recorded a video to be…
It’s your funeral
The rise of ‘coffin clubs’
The Polish electronic music revolution of the 1950s
It was created in November 1957, a year before the BBC’s fabled Radiophonic Workshop, and was far more influential in…
Dear Mary: I’m disabled – how can I stop my carer being so controlling?
Q. I am a disabled man with a good brain and an independent bent. However, I need help to wash…
Is the increasing secularisation of funerals a good thing?
‘You’re thinking these girls all wrong,’ Miss Mai tells Enid in Winsome Pinnock’s play Leave Taking, adapted from the recent…
J.S. Bach v. Joan Baez
I was at a funeral the other day at which the music was so inspiring that I struggled to feel…
Dear Mary
Q. Mary, I am what you would probably call a Sloane Ranger. I have great numbers of close friends and…
The death of the funeral
I mourn for the traditional ceremony
Your problems solved
Q. Some years ago, while appearing as a barrister before a bench of three magistrates in the youth court, I…
A noble undertaking
By looking after the dead, funeral directors allow the living to love and mourn them
Dear Mary
Q. Regarding the writing of ‘no presents’ on an invitation (Dear Mary, 6 July), my own experience is that many…
