Death in England: An Illustrated History

Eds Peter C Jupp, Clare Gittings

Manchester University Press, £19.99, pp 304

ISBN 0 7190 5811 2

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When I was a child in primary school one of the hymns we used to sing had, as part of the chorus, the words: “When the death shades round us gather, Teach, oh, teach us how to die.” It is a measure of the rapid change in our societal attitudes to death in the intervening 25 years that such a hymn is unlikely to be found in a …