Presented by Sue Flipping.

Sue gave the successful talk, this time last year, on Medieval Church Graffiti. This month she explains death and the funeral rites that follow it have always reflected the culture of the time. What we consider ‘normal’ now comes from thousands of years of changing beliefs and traditions. Our ancestors had practices that seem strange, even bizarre, to 21st century minds yet we can often see how they leave their mark even now. The talk looks at funeral and death rites over the last thousand years and across the world, considering how they reflect the way our ancestors lived in successive generations.