You couldn’t make it up.  When the remains of the last Tsar of All the Russias, Nicholas II, and some of his family were found down a disused mineshaft outside Yekaterinburg in the 1990s, the government of Boris Yeltsin held a full state funeral in the cathedral of St

Worcester crematorium   Worcester City Council is, laudably, not inclined to sell its crematorium to one of those predatory sharks we all know and love so well. The council needs to spend up to £2 million to upgrade it. But read on and see what the jostling sharks are prepared

  Many celebrants will have had the experience of welcoming a convict at a funeral, together with the prison officer to whom he/she is shackled. Do, please, share your experience in a comment.   In Australia, belt-tightening has led to a review of the cost of this service to the

  Hawks have come to the rescue of mourners at a crematorium plagued by aggressive seagulls. The birds of prey were used to scare away gulls at Eastbourne crematorium after complaints that mourners were being dive-bombed as they left the chapel. Whole story here. 

  From a comment piece by Terry Pratchett in today’s Times:  Earlier this year a commission of the great and the good was set up by myself and another gentleman of means, to look at practices in other countries where assisted dying is commonplace and to report on how it

  Did you like it?  I’d be inclined to give it 10 out of 10.  Last night’s BBC2 programme Dead Good Job is well worth watching. If you missed it, it covers:  a Muslim funeral company’s attempts to bury the dead as quickly as possible in accordance with Islamic tradition,

    Posted by Richard Rawlinson   A skeleton, a skeleton, my kingdom for a skeleton!  Might we soon discover if Richard III is the hunchbacked tyrant with a withered arm depicted in Shakespeare or if his physical disability was merely Tudor propaganda?  The king was buried in the church of a