Over Your Dead Body: the history and future of how we deal with the dead

This blog is (mostly) about a book I've written about the business of death. 

It's partly based on my own experiences in the undertaking trade some years ago, and it looks at what happens when we die and afterwards, down the ages. It also has practical advice on arranging funerals and DIY undertaking, and the ecology of the different ways to go. 

It's full of bizarre facts from the worlds of history, science, warfare, religion and crime, from the middle ages to now, and it's peopled with strange characters who led truly remarkable lives, some of them prominent figures in history. There is also, surprisingly often, humour.

It takes in the after-death existence of pharaohs, kings and dictators, a recipe for a medieval funeral cake, the appearance of the first department stores - which served the huge Victorian industry of death and mourning - explains how 20,000 people in post-communist Poland were murdered by health carers because they were worth more dead than alive, and why we wear black at funerals.

The final section explores the future of what we do with the dead, and new methods of disposal set to replace cremation and burial, with an ecological audit of the different methods, old and new, plus Green burial and advice on DIY funerals.

Buy it online here, or if you're in the US, here, or as an e book here
or at Watkin's, Cecil Court or Neseblod Records, Oslo.