Death
A poignant and perfect send-off
We knew the church would be packed as Shelley had died so young. We knew the church would be freezing,…
The unsettling rise of DeathTok
For teenage girls on TikTok, the makeup routine is an almost sacred ritual. Manicured fingertips dart around at virtuosic speed,…
Maoist China in microcosm: Old Kiln, by Jia Pingwa, reviewed
Smouldering resentment flares to self-destructive violence in a remote village as the Cultural Revolution serves as a pretext for vengeance and exploitation
Highs and lows: The Boys, by Leo Robson, reviewed
Mourning the loss of their parents, two brothers succumb to listlessness and lethargy in a sweltering London gripped by Olympic fever
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…
The secret to great friendships
A few years back, a friend from Newcastle was down in London and I was giving him a tour of…
The death of widowhood
There were many tributes paid to the Jersey aid worker Simon Boas when he died of throat cancer in July,…
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’…
What would the Romans think of assisted suicide?
What a song and dance about the end of life! Historians assure us that, among human beings, there is a…
Back from the beyond: The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, reviewed
Three adolescents reappear in their home town on the Massachusetts coast, having been presumed dead – which is closer to the truth than their families realise
Septuagenarians behaving badly: Stockholm, by Noa Yedlin, reviewed
Four elderly people conspire, for different reasons, to keep the death of their friend a secret until he’s safely awarded the expected Nobel Prize for Economics
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of…
Loved and lost
Richard E. Grant pulls off a feat here. The title is twee but the content isn’t. With unselfpitying dash the…
Death in Rome
On Sunday 17 September 1820, John Keats and his travelling companion, the young painter Joseph Severn, set sail for Italy,…
Happiness is a warm gun
‘Better use your sense,’ advised Bob Dylan: ‘take what you have gathered from coincidence.’ John Higgs is a master of…
Last words
Facing up to the prospect of one’s own mortality is always jarring; but when you’ve spent your life trying, and…
Communing with the dead
Grief leads us down some strange roads. Few, though, can be as peculiar as those charted by Paul Stanbridge in…
A death-haunted city
Naples, the tatterdemalion capital of the Italian south, is said to be awash with heroin. Chinese-run morphine refineries on its…
Low life
‘But you look so well!’ How many times have I heard that lately. Kindly meant by most, but for a…
Time is running out
This is not a book about tennis. Roger Federer appears early on, trailed by the obligatory question ‘When will he…
Life in the Afterworld
Angus Mooney is dead. Freshly murdered, he’s appalled to find himself in an Afterworld, having always rejected the possibility of…
