Death
How Captain Mainwaring lightened my mother’s dying days
On Saturday evening I showered, shaved and, prompted by a strange impulse, put on my going-out clothes. Then I cycled…
Why can’t my mother be allowed to die at home
As they say: it all happened so quickly that it wasn’t until afterwards. One minute I was bawling at my…
How an orphaned baby kudu gave solace to my grieving friend
Laikipia, Kenya On 5 April this year, my neighbour Torrie’s sister Vicki died during an operation in a Nairobi…
What my mother’s death means for Brexit
Considerate to the last, she had her order of service arranged in her mind. I sat close with my notebook.…
Banana leaf, wood-effect on knitted? Choosing my mother’s coffin
The mental fruit of yet another sleepless night was that my mother was determined to arrange her funeral as quickly…
My friend’s death taught me what Easter really means
The bravest thing I’ve ever seen was 93-year-old Albert’s decision to die and the days after in which he stuck…
My old horse was tough, ferocious and violent – and I loved her as much as she loved me
Under a blood moon, that was how Tara went down in the end. The old chestnut mare sure knew how…
![British poet Salena Godden presenter of Mrs Death Misses Death on Radio 4. [Photo: Roberto Ricciuti / Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Radio.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Listening to people talking about death can be strangely consoling
‘Without death,’ says Salena Godden, ‘life would be a never-ending conveyor belt of sensation.’ For her death is what gives…
Podcasts still have a long way to go to challenge the best of conventional radio
Here’s a thought. Matthew Bannister, former Radio 1 controller turned presenter of programmes such as Outlook on the World Service…
How hospices make you think differently about life
The timing of the Today programme’s series about hospices could not have been more apt, coming as it did so…
An intense conversation about life, love and writing with Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy draws her epigraph for The Cost of Living from Marguerite Duras’s Practicalities: ‘You’re always more unreal to yourself…
It is a sin to die in the Land of the Depraved
New York Remember when the internet, Twitter, Facebook and other such useless gimmicks were supposed to usher in an era…
A very British response to a death at a funeral
Something very odd occurred at a funeral I attended last week — somebody died. I don’t mean the person who…
Susie Boyt neatly skewers the self-help trends
Grief is not being able to eat a small boiled egg. ‘Could you face an egg?’ the widowed Jean asks…
What can we learn from Jeremy Bentham’s pickled head?
Under the central dome of UCL — an indoor crossroads where hordes of students come and go on their way…
Face time
The inimitably pukka voice of Jacob Rees-Mogg echoed through Radio 4 on Thursday morning. He was not, though, talking about…
A matter of life and death
Before he died, the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, reassured his diocese that he was ‘at peace and…
Whatever happened to Alice?
In 1987, the art of opera changed decisively. John Adams’s opera Nixon in China was so unlike the usual run…
Permanent ink
Brooklyn Shall I have my sister’s skin peeled off for display after she dies? Specifically, the tattooed bits — the…
Weird, wise, thought-provoking and hypnotic: Heart of a Dog reviewed
Heart of a Dog is a film by Laurie Anderson and it’s a meditative, free-associating rumination on life, loss, love…
Was there a cover-up over Shakespeare’s death?
How did Shakespeare kick the bucket? Lloyd Evans considers the evidence
Britain needs a museum of communist terror
We need a museum to help us remember that
What does it take to have someone declared dead? £480, for a start
Matters of life and death Lord Lucan is now officially presumed dead. How do you have someone declared dead? In…
The NHS has forgotten the art of a dignified death
Ten years ago, the National Health Service eased my father’s final days. My mother, this year, was not so lucky
Corbyn’s turn on Today was as graceful and twinkle-toed as Bowie himself
Some might say that Jeremy Corbyn is cloth-eared, tone-deaf, socially inept but on Monday morning, as the death of the…
