The study of dying is like gazing into a reflecting pool. The waters there reflect back to us the kinds of people we have become. Behind the fragile and temporary images of our individual selves that appear on its surface exist suggestions of less familiar company – strange tides of history, cultural undertows that sweep in and out of our lives. The ripple of these forces tug and work at our identities, at first to create them, and finally to test them before their eventual dismissal at death. These are influences so subtle, indeed so intimate in our day-to-day lives, that we often barely notice their workings underneath the modern obsession to present ourselves to others as distinct and individual. Yet, dying conduct shows their power over us in sharp relief.

This book is an attempt to stand back from these images of ourselves, to take a wide-angle view of the human story of endings, and to identify and describe the major patterns of dying throughout our history. Though all becomes dead eventually, the paths to this eventuality have not all been the same; we have not always died in the same way. This is because human beings do not share a common cultural heritage or physical environment. Idiosyncratic religious beliefs and rituals surrounding the fact of death abound, as any encyclopaedia of human customs will attest. Yet remarkably, intriguingly, much of our personal behaviour before death exhibits itself in only a handful of simple styles.