MY FATHER’S WAKE

(W&N £8.99) ‘DEATH comes in many guises . . . On death’s shore there will be no right or wrong, only a better or worse way to die. And there will be a lesson, too, in how to live, and how to love.’

In his work reporting on conflicts across the world, the award-winning writer and filmmaker Kevin Toolis has witnessed death in many guises. Even when he was a child, growing up on a remote island off the coast of County Mayo, death was a familiar companion: he was taken to his first wake when he was just seven years old.

But it was his father’s wake that inspired this lyrical meditation on living and dying. ‘How can it be possible to never talk out loud about death in a world where everyone dies?’ Toolis wonders.

His moving memoir is a powerful reminder that the end of life is as precious as its beginning.