Death and dying are subjects that are still largely taboo in our society. Although they are as inevitable as taxes, we don't like to even think about them, much less write about them. Hence it was with some trepidation that I opened Don't Drop the Coffin. Written by Barry Albin-Dyer (with Greg Watts), this book purports to "lift the lid on Britain's most remarkable undertaker".
F. A. Albin & Son have a two hundred year history in the funeral business in Bermondsey, South London and this biography is both fascinating and strange in equal parts. At times, it tends to read like a 280 page advertising brochure for the firm, with Barry Albin-Dyer stressing time and time again how high his professional standards are. Yet to give the man his due, he certainly seems to have made some positive changes in the business and thus deserves credit. For him, undertaking seemed more a calling than a job, something that he watched his father doing from early childhood and introduced his own sons to at a similar age. Albin-Dyer is a perfectionist in all that he does, yet he is a perfectionist with heart. As he points out frequently during the book, his job involves dealing with the living as much as with the dead, something that he does with compassion and understanding.
There are parts of the book that are not really for the really squeamish although these are actually very few and far between. In the main the book is a mine of fascinating information about all aspects of funeral direction. It touches on the funeral traditions of people from different countries and religious faiths. It talks about funeral cars, from limousines to the traditional horse-drawn carriages. There are descriptions of some of the funerals that Albins have conducted over the years, with clients ranging from foreign royalty to local gangsters to film stars and, more recently, the family of murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor. Albin-Dyer relates many unusual things that have happened to him over the years, from the story of the doctor who insisted on taking the temperature of a rotting corpse to ensure that it was really dead, to his first venture into cryogenics in which he prepared the body of an elderly woman for freezing.
I found this book an extremely interesting read. In common with most other people, I suspect, I have given little thought over the years to the funeral business. It was something that I knew existed but didn't really care to acknowledge. Don't Drop the Coffin was thus truly an eye-opening book - it told me everything I never wanted to know.
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
ISBN: 0340786647
Price: £16.99 h/b (paperback due in Oct 2002)
Date Reviewed: June 2002
My Rating: 3/5
