THE VICTORIAN CELEBRATION OF DEATH James Stevens Curl, Sutton Publishing, Thrupp (Glos), 2000. Hardback, 330 pages, £20.00. ISBN 0-7509-2318-0.

During the last fifty years we have witnessed the decline of many standards in public life and this is reflected in the lack of care bestowed on our architectural heritage. The fact of a preservation order has still allowed philistine public bodies or greedy developers to destroy gems of our heritage. The descendants of Cromwell and his iconoclasts still walk abroad seeking what they might devour. There has been a decline in cemetery care in the last four decades. Nevertheless, the last twenty years has seen a great interest shown in matters concerning death, particularly bereavement, and there has been a huge growth in the specialist literature in all parts of the world. In Britain we have, for example, learned journals such as Death and Mortality.
    In his introduction and first chapter, Professor Curl traces the genesis of the Victorian attitude to death from the sixteenth century by way of early poets, beginning with Spenser. Attitudes to death have always been of immense importance to mankind and all the more so when knowledge of the workings of the living body was so imperfectly understood. However, Professor Curl has confined himself to a particular period of great interest in the study of death which has the added bonus of a vast quantity of architectural and archival artefacts
    The birth of the first private cemeteries is related as a fascinating story and the part played by H.R.H. The Duke of Sussex (later Grand Master) is dealt with at length. Cemeteries include the Liverpool Necropolis (1825), Glasgow (1832), Kensal Green (1833), Norwood (1836) and Highgate (1839). Brookwood (1854) boasted a regular train service which ran from The London Necropolis Company at Waterloo Station and carried mourners on first, second, or third class return fares. Coffins were conveyed only on single tickets! The final chapters contain an excellent treatment on mourning and ephemera.
    The book is an inexpensive delight which can only give its readers an advancement in learning. It must encourage us to go and explore that rich and exciting world of the Victorian celebration of death.
    John Ashby