Coffin and splutterin’
In the correspondence columns of the Feb Funeral Service Journal we find this touching plaint. Dig the velveteen undertakerly verbals, especially in the first sentence: Dear Sirs Re: The missing link One of the fundamental items provided by a Funeral Director is the coffin used to contain the mortal remains of our clients’ loved ones. When we […]
Publishing event of the year!
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, […]
Without knobs on
From Richard Rawlinson, our religious correspondent, who is a Catholic. The campaign against ugly and extraneous coffin handles launched by aesthete and designer David Hicks, which the GFG ran a little while back – here – has support in high places. Pope John Paul II’s coffin was beautiful in its simplicity.
Second-hand coffin for sale
A used casket went up for sale last month at a Los Angeles auction house with the estimate price of $1,000. The ‘one previous owner’ was Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F Kennedy’s suspected assassin. Shot dead by Jack Ruby just days after JFK’s murder in 1963, he was buried in Texas, but was unearthed […]
Ozzy Osbourne on coffin shopping
Ozzy Osborne is an agony uncle at the Sunday Times. Here’s a recent interaction: Dear Dr Ozzy, is it bad form to shop for your own coffin? (I ask this as a cancer patient with very particular tastes.) Anonymous Ozzy replies: It ain’t bad form, but there’s gotta be something better to do with your […]
Buried in greenery
When the GFG went to the London Funeral Exhibition last summer at Epping Woodland Burial Park we met Angie Whitaker, who works at a sister burial ground, Chiltern. Her husband is buried in the woods there. Angie gave a talk to visitors about her experience of natural burial. I asked her to write it up […]
Remembering Josh
“REMEMBERING JOSH” is a film that records the life of our son Josh, as it was remembered at his funeral early in 2011. Josh Edmonds died in a road accident in while traveling South East Asia in January 2011. He was 22 years old. Our film is both a tribute to him, with many wonderful […]
Brutally creative chaos
You may remember this post, The Chaos of Meaning, about the photographic essay which Jimmy Edmonds created in commemoration of his son Josh. If you missed it, click the link and go see it; it’s rare that we are lucky enough to post anything so extraordinary and beautiful. Above is a trailer for a film […]
Frightfully common
The English interior designer David Hicks created the signature look of the Swinging Sixties. Those strong colours and geometrical designs — they’re his. He seems to have been a man at ease with his mortality, a mindset informed, perhaps, by his daily ritual of chain-smoking cigarettes. At his flat in Albany he “created a crimson […]
Death in the community
Beyond the unappetising business of flogging pre-need plans to the tottering classes, undertakers do next to nothing to educate the public about funerals. They seek to be seen as public-spirited. They do good stunts, raise money for the hospice here, the air ambulance there. But how many stage events to raise awareness of the […]
