All the Living and the Dead: A Personal Investigation into the Death Trade

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The Telegraph Magazine : interview by Jessamy Calkin Why we're thinking about death in the wrong way: From pathology to disaster management, Hayley Campbell spent two years immersed in a field few people know about - here's what it taught her. It was interesting getting to know the people who do the jobs most of us would be unable or unwilling to do. I enjoyed (ok, maybe enjoyed isn't exactly the right verb.... appreciated perhaps?) learning about the processes performed in: preparing bodies for burial, discovering the cause of death, and using bodies to further scientific knowledge.

a b c d "Colin Morgan and Charlotte Spencer set to thrill in new supernatural BBC One drama The Living And The Dead" . Retrieved 7 August 2015. I enjoyed reading most of the book except for mental issues the author had with a dead baby. The baby's corpse was being washed, quite tenderly, and when the mortuary attendant went to get a towel, it's face slipped under the water and the author got very anxious and wanted to rescue it from drowning. I think all of us would have had that reaction. How should we live, when death is always with us? All the Living and the Dead is a book about death, and how to stop pretending about it. Hayley Campbell is working out a philosophy of death by getting close to it; holding it; asking interesting questions of people who spend their lives dealing with it. This is an essential, compassionate, honest examination of how we deal with death, and how it changes the living.” —Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Wife An intriguing, candid, and frequently poignant book that asks what the business of death can teach all of us in the midst of life. Readers will form a connection with Campbell's voice as intimate as her own relationship with mortality." —Lindsey Fitzharris, bestselling author of The Butchering Art We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Introduction by Ashley Pharoah

Campbell's genuine curiosity, careful reporting, and insightful commentary make for an engrossing read. Readers will appreciate both her meticulous reporting and her marked compassion." — Booklist (starred) We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we're so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

We wouldn’t want to bring the mood down any lower than it is. Let’s be upbeat. Let’s talk about it later. Let’s think about talking about it one day when death is no longer here. But there has never been a point in history when death wasn’t everywhere. Where living things are, death follows. And sometimes – when we have the privilege – where death goes, so does denial. Joyce doesn’t take life away from Gabriel, just the protection of his self-delusions. After this night, Gabriel will have to live life knowingly in the shadow of the dead.

Reviews

Paul O. Jenkins (2010). Richard Dyer-Bennet: The Last Minstrel. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-6047-3360-0. Not many people like to think about death because we are reminded that one day we too will perish and our molecules will be recycled into forming other things, both living and inanimate. Nathan moves from the kind, loving, slightly reserved scientist of those sparkling early days to a driven, dark man struggling for his very soul. For as he investigates what seem to be arbitrary hauntings, he discovers a link between all of them, and that link is... Nathan Appleby.

Hayley Campbell experienced her first loss when she was a pre-teen but before she wrote this book, she’d never seen a dead body. The author developed a curiosity about death as a result, wanting to know what had been concealed from her and the impact that has on us. This blew my mind as I grew up attending wakes with open caskets. (I come from a large German Catholic family.) My relatives modeled what grief looked like and that helped me make sense of things in turn. The Living And The Dead is available as a BBC iPlayer box set now and will also air on BBC One from Tuesday 28 June. Author and journalist Hayley Campbell is not one who runs from death. For this book, she interviewed many people who work with the dead. These include: Embalmers, cremators, anatomical pathology technologists (yeh, I hadn't heard of them before either), grave diggers, executioners (countries like the US still have the barbaric death penalty, though most modern democracies have abolished it), and even a man who makes death masks.A digression. No one think it more praiseworthy to undergo anything else without help with pain, is this the biblical 'In pain you will bring forth children and to your husband you will turn and he will have authority over you,' since we have abandoned the latter half, or most of us have, why has the first part remained? Pity the Amish (who still abide by the second half as well) and Scientologists neither of whom are allowed any pain relief or to make the slightest noise during labour and birth. I wonder if they actually manage that? Interesting was the special maternity unit for women who were going to deliver a dead baby or one who would die soon after birth. A quiet, calm place, where there were no screams of pain from women in unmedicated labour. There are cooling cots so that the baby can remain with the parents until they are ready to let the baby be buried. And midwives who dedicate themselves to delivering only dead babies in sadness, although they train to deliver in joy, one of the few medical procedures that is generally joyous. Special women, very compassionate and empathetic. In her book, Campbell interviews a funeral director, director of anatomical services, death mask sculptor, disaster victim identification, crime scene cleaner, executioner, embalmer, anatomical pathology technologist, bereavement midwife, gravedigger, crematorium operator and an employee from the Cryonics Institute. The variety of people and jobs was well rounded and each employee provided a new aspect to consider. The author began this book as a look at the people who work behind the scenes to care for the dead, and to help the living who are grieving them. She even admits that at the onset of writing this book she thought that it would be a straightforward process as she followed the body from death to burial or cremation. It turned out to be a work of much greater scope. During a cremation, cancer is the last thing to burn, even sometimes remaining along with the bones.