Seventy per cent of British families now choose cremation for their funerals, a rapid change in traditional death customs. This is the first book to investigate why cremation replaced burial. It examines the political, religious, economic and social reasons behind personal choice and sets them in a European context. This study is doubly timely with the expanding scholarly interest in death studies, and the new media interest in the British way of death.

Auteur
PETER C. JUPP is a United Reformed Church Minister and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Sociology, University of Bristol, UK. He is a founding editor of the quarterly journal Mortality, Chairman of the Council of the Cremation Society of Great Britain and a non-executive director of the London Cremation Company.

Contenu
List of Abbreviations Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction How The Church Lost Its Monopoly Of Burial, 1820-1852 Cremation Legalised, 1852-1884 The Early Years of Cremation, 1884-1914 The Development of Cremation, 1914-1939 The Advance of Cremation: Wartime and Reconstruction, 1939-1952 The Popularisation of Cremation in England, 1952-2000 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index