DEATH AND ARCHITECTURE James Stevens Curl, revised edition, Sutton Publishing, Thrupp (Glos.), 2002. Hardback, xxviii and 415 pages, £25.00. ISBN 0-7509-2877

Woody Allen once said, ‘I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens’. If only he had listened to the wise words of the Monty Python team: ‘What have you got to lose? You come from nothing––you go back to nothing, what have you lost?––Nothing.’
    Exactly when our simian ancestors became conscious of their own mortality is a matter of scholarly debate. Yet, from the earliest traces of human civilisation it is clear that death has been a constant meditation. It brings sombre gifts, which, like the Muses, have inspired legions of poets, artists and dramatists––and nowhere is it more powerfully expressed than in architecture. From the step pyramid of the ancient Egyptian king Zoser at Sakkara, to the poppy-field cemeteries of a senseless war, the mighty do indeed look on, and are humbled.
    This encyclopaedic tome covers literally hundreds of ways that man has chosen to mark his final journey. Deftly navigating through twelve well-illustrated chapters, Professor Curl eloquently guides the reader on a grand tour of the history of death, pausing en route to pay homage to countless temples, mausolea, cemeteries and monumental tombs, each exemplifying the multifarious ways our forebears have chosen to celebrate the inevitable conclusion of life.
    As the dust jacket states, ‘every creature that is born must die: death is the only certainty of life’, a sentiment highly pertinent to modern Freemasonry, itself the recipient form of an ancient tradition. Seneca, Curl informs us, instructed us to familiarise ourselves with the subject of death, ‘so that it ceases to be frightening’, while the Psalmists ‘urged that we may be taught to number our days in order to apply ourselves to wisdom’. But ultimately is there any wisdom to be found in death, other than acceptance, and that we may better know how to live?
    Matthew Scanlan