Wullie’s story was a time capsule from an era that’s almost gone from our memories.

Wullie’s story was a time capsule from an era that’s almost gone from our memories.
People love humanist funerals for their compassion, their honesty and their humour: they choose them for what they include, not what they exclude.
My role is to speak for the bereaved, and the more accurately I do that, the better the ceremony. Having multiple contributions from family and friends writing from wherever in the world they happen to be allows me to create a richly textured, multi-faceted portrait.
How David Bowie and the coronavirus are changing the way we deal with death
What do we mean when we say someone’s a character? It’s a word with many nuances, but I can think of no-one about whom it is more appropriate than my neighbour of twenty years, Bill Purves. I live in a mews and when I first moved here twenty years ago, there were still two working … Continue Reading
At Jewish funerals, the traditional greeting to mourners is “I wish you a long life”. I can see where they’re coming from, but a long life is not always a blessing.Here in Britain, one in five 80 year olds already suffers from dementia. The Alzheimer’s Society has just published a report which suggests that if current trends continue, we … Continue Reading
It’s easy to forget that our lives are getting longer. The average life expectancy when I was born in the 1950’s was 65: now men can expect to live to 78 and women a further four years, to 82. And most deaths come at the end of a long life: they may be sad, they may come … Continue Reading