How to speak well of the dead.

Daniel Scott is assembling and annotating the definitive compendium of the most striking, most sonorous and most memorable funeral addresses given for notable public figures of recent times. A GOOD FUNERAL will give the reader chance to revisit the achievements and sense the essence of some of the most storied figures of contemporary culture, in the words of those closest to them -- designers like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, musicians such as Lee Scratch Perry and Dusty Springfield, comedians Kenneth Williams and Tony Hancock, politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Tom Driberg. And many more luminaries, some of whose tributes are revealed here to the wider world for the very first time.

As Daniel has it: 'A Good Funeral aims to gather some of the most fascinating, witty, loving, appalling, ambiguous, maddening, moving and inspiring addresses ever given as a send-off to whatever comes next.'