About The Good Funeral Guide
The Good Funeral Guide is an independent consumer guide to the funeral industry. It is a book and this website. You can buy the book here.
It is still early days in the review process but, to date, five reviewers have given it five stars on Amazon and The Good Book Stall says of it: “Charles Cowling speaks openly and with clarity about every aspect of the practicalities of death and funerals. The result is a surprisingly gripping book to read and one that will help many to help themselves through what we all know can be a difficult time. Don’t wait till the need arises, read it now and have it to hand when you do need it.”
I shall not hesitate to record all adverse criticism: you need to know what’s bad about it, too. To date, there has been a strong objection by an embalmer to my description of embalming, and I accept that my account may in one place have been disrespectful. In others, it is admiring. Embalming is a practice about which I am ambivalent.
The Good Funeral Guide is for people
- who need to arrange a funeral for someone now
- who want to make future arrangements for their own funeral
- who’d like to learn about death and funerals
What the guide does
The guide is designed to inform and empower speedily and efficiently. It is designed to be accessible to all readers. Its purpose is to enable readers to
- make informed choices about products and services
- get best value for money
- read reviews of best funeral directors
- create a meaningful and memorable funeral ceremony
- acquire some background information about death and dying, and find out where to learn more
What the guide does not do
The guide does not take a campaigning stance on any issue, preferring to set out facts dispassionately (sometimes ambivalently), and allow you to make your own choices.
The guide does not reproduce information already widely available on subjects like registering the death, what coroners do, probate and other administrative and financial matters.
The guide points readers to books already out there which this guide wishes neither to upstage or compete with. There is enough bitchiness in the funeral business, and there are enough axe grinders. There has arguably been too much undertaker-bashing, too. I want this cause to belong to all who care about it –a truly collaborative affair whose focus is those baffled, everyday folk who simply need to arrange a funeral.