"Good Funeral Guide" by Charles Cowling

The Good Funeral Guide: Everything You Need to Know - Everything You Need to Do [Paperback]
Charles Cowling (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars

# Paperback: 216 pages
# Publisher: Continuum Publishing Corporation (20 May 2010)
# Language English
# ISBN-10: 144115731X

Charles Cowling is a funeral celebrant who works with families who do not want a conventional religious ceremony. He has an insider's understanding of the funeral industry and a mass of contacts. A funeral is almost always a crisis purchase. Consumers have no means even of differentiating between the 5,000 funeral directors practising in the UK. This will be the definitive guide to arranging a funeral... It is for anyone who

• · needs to arrange a funeral for someone now
• · has sick or elderly relatives or friends and knows that a funeral is imminent
• · wants to find a good funeral director and have some say in the funeral itself
• · wants to make future arrangements for their own funeral
• · would like to learn about death and funerals

Authoritative, impartial, and empowering, it is indispensable for those who don't want a conventional religious ceremony and invaluable for those who do. In a world where consumers expect to find guides to everything under the sun, this is one huge gap crying out to be plugged. This is a book that everyone will need, probably at least twice.

About the Author

Charles Cowling is a trained funeral celebrant, committed to empowering families to let their people go with peace, dignity and love. He also trains funeral celebrants and reviews schools for The Good Schools Guide.

"Charles Cowling was, for too many years, a well-meaning teacher of English, a job for which his mildly anarchic nature essentially disqualified him. To the great relief of his students and colleagues he jumped ship to become a jobbing writer on the flimsy strength of having had an article about exam results published by the Sunday Times. As he sought in an indigent, emancipated sort of way to make some sort of a living from written words - a couple of plays here, some copywriting there - he ensured essential supplies of tobacco and red wine by taking a succession of part-time jobs (most writers need a little something on the side). He was, variously, barperson, deckhand on the Portland-Weymouth ferry and teacher of words to the guests of Dorset's prisons and its hellhole young offender institution. From this latter job he was resoundingly sacked, leaving him an angry advocate of prison reform and, yes, still a lousy teacher. He trained to be a secular funeral celebrant, and it was his many conversations with the bereaved, and his experience of the chilly English funeral, that impelled him to write this book. If it should meet your needs at a time of need, Charles may even have finally got something right."