'A beautifully written and thought provoking journey'
Professor Sue Black, author of All That Remains
 
'There surely won't be a better history of the subject than Conisbee's'
Literary Review
 
'Richly researched ... an intimate chronology'
TLS
 
The lost art of 'dying well' was common knowledge to our ancestors - who, living closer to death than we do, had an intimate and integrated relationship with the afterlife.
 
For centuries, cycles of death, dying and disposal have shaped society, from the death-watchers of the Middle Age to the pomp of Victorian funeral wear.

Ranging from the plague pit to the grave-robbery, from consecrated ground to the hangman's drop, No Ordinary Deaths is a groundbreaking work of social history which asks: how did our ancestors live, and die?
 
How might the old ways help prepare us for our own ends?