john on Funerals

During the second world war, [the British statesman] Sir John Laurence attended what he describes as “a sort of Communist memorial service” to " Stanislavsky (the seminal Soviet Theatre pr...

The [true] story is told that Voltaire, the French Enlightenment philosopher, was speaking at the funeral of an aristocrat. In the speech he declared, “He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal ...

Not long before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the congregation at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church: If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. An...