David Barrington is an independent funeral director in Liverpool. We swap emails from time to time, and I asked him if he’d like to be my guest on this blog. I’m very pleased that he has accepted the invitation. And I very much hope that we shall hear from him

The Undertaking is a documentary about Lynch and Sons, the funeral home in Milford, Michigan, which is also home to Thomas Lynch, the man whose writings and poetry have greatly influenced the thinking of so many of us in the UK. It’s a marvellous piece of work. Watch it in

Undertakers seek to be well thought of in all sorts of oblique and coded ways. Instead of proclaiming a USP and telling the world why they reckon they’re the best, they do stuff they hope will have a spin-off. Much of this has to do with cosying up to their

Is there a psychologically satisfactory way of disposing of a dead person’s body? That’s a judgement only you can make. If you buy into a belief system you’ll probably have no difficulty because faith renders what must be done, the burning, the burying, the dissolution and the nature of it,