It was the day after The Spectator’s summer party and I was on my way to something called a death café. After an unknown quantity of Pol Roger the night before, I was already contemplating my own mortality. This death café was being held in a Gail’s in Horsham (after closing time, mercifully for its customers). The coffee tables were shoved awkwardly together in the middle of the shop floor. Eight of us, all women, sat: a healthcare worker, a retiree, a lawyer, two death doulas (we’ll get to them later) and me, at 26, three decades younger than anyone else present.

We were there because ‘death positivity’ is having a moment. There are death cafés, death doulas and funeral celebrants who’ll narrate your cremation like a wedding DJ. Advocates for death positivity say that we have become squeamish about the idea of dying and that the only way back to a ‘good death’ is to talk about it more.

A man in his twenties said he was so paralysed by ‘death anxiety’ it stopped him doing anything with his life

A man in his twenties said he was so paralysed by ‘death anxiety’ it stopped him doing anything with his life

Death doulas – sometimes billed as ‘soul midwives’ – are the influencers in this world. They claim to offer emotional, practical and spiritual support in someone’s final months, sitting with the dying the way a birth doula sits with a woman in labour. Caroline Lucas, the former Green party leader, has trained as one. Davina McCall says she will get around to it when she retires. Nicole Kidman is in training following the death of her mother. One doula organisation credits the ‘Kidman effect’ for increased interest.

It........

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