'Davies and Rumble analyse natural burial and give it a spiritual re-brand through which they highlight the potentially meaningless death exemplified by conventional burial and cremation. Life-style and death-style are unified as environmental science is utilised to redefine the hitherto rotting corpse into an animate gift to nature, to fecundity, and to future generations.They challenge the very meaning of dead, challenge the church to create a new ecological litany, and challenge each of us to create our own life-death narrative. We must die to create a viable planet, but only if we utilise natural burial.'

Ken West MBE, retired Bereavement Services Manager and author of A Guide to Natural Burial

'This important and original book traces and analyses the rapid rise of "natural burial" since its inception in Britain in 1993. It argues convincingly that the popularity of natural burial is associated with a distinctive mode of spirituality.'

Professor Charles Watkins, University of Nottingham, UK

'Provides a brilliant and theoretically sound analysis of why this new choice next to conventional burial and cremation appeals to the British. Natural Burial is a must read for all students of comparative death studies.'

Professor Eric Venbrux, Centre for Thanatology, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands