My gorgeous daughter died a year ago this week. So what a strange time to be in Mexico amid the annual Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) festival, arriving the day after what would have been her 32nd birthday to find decorations going up across the country to celebrate this world-famous event. Windows being garlanded with orange marigolds, doors festooned with colourful sheets of paper cut into patterns, markets selling decorated sugar skulls and skeletons seemingly everywhere.

Given my grief, which sits heavy on my soul and erupts in waves of sadness at unexpected times, I felt nervous returning to Mexico at such a time for two concerts with Africa Express, the collaborative music collective that I co-founded. But touring the album we made last year with some amazing local artists helped lift my spirits in the summer. And now I am glad to be here since the festivities that evolved from mystical Aztec traditions offer buttoned-up Brits a valuable lesson about death.

As a nation, we treat death almost as taboo in our atomised society, despite its grim inevitability and the morbid fascination of our Victorian predecessors living in an age of higher mortality rates. Now most lives end hidden away in institutions such as care homes, hospitals and hospices, meaning citizens can live decades without seeing a corpse, in contrast to many other parts of our planet. Polls indicate Britons find death a difficult........

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