BEYOND THE GRAVE Changing Trends in Burial Practices with Roger Luckhurst on Saturday the 26th October 2024 at 3:30 pm Death may be permanent, but our customs for how we deal with the dead are always changing. Cremation, which today in the UK is the predominant method for disposing of the mortal remains of the deceased has only been legal here since the late 19th Century. And since the1990s we have seen a whole host of brand-new funereal practices. The departed can now be returned to nature in many novel ways: buried in eco-friendly coffins made from cardboard or wicker in woods or meadows, or they can be cryogenically frozen, or vitrified, or compressed into diamonds, or even fired into space. You probably never realised there were so many exit options available to you when you depart this mortal realm. Roger Luckhurst Roger Luckhurst has written lots of books on science fiction, horror and the Gothic. His previous publications include The Mummy's Curse: The True Story of a Dark Fantasy and critical studies of the films The Shining and Alien. He has also co-editied books including The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History c.1880-1900 and Transactions and Encounters: Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century. He has edited numerous Gothic classics, including Stevenson's Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine and Bram Stoker's Dracula. |
---|