The Good Funeral Guide

The Good Funeral Guide, an independent consumer guide to funerals, is a book and a website written and produced by Charles Cowling. You can buy the book here.

The Good Funeral Guide will tell you everything you need to know and everything you need to do when someone dies. It will inform you speedily, efficiently, matter-of-factly and thoroughly. It will enable you to:

• decide how the body of the person who has died will be cared for and who will do it
• make informed choices about products and services
• get best value for money
• read reviews of best funeral directors
• create a meaningful and memorable funeral ceremony
• create an end-of-life plan
• acquire some background information about death and dying, and find out where to learn more.

Above all, the Good Funeral Guide will put you in charge.

If you are arranging a funeral, you need advice now. On this website you will find some useful information and many links to other good sources of information.

Please don’t hesitate to contact Charles if you would like to do that. What do you need to know? Have you any questions about funerals you would like to ask him? Would you like him to help you find a good funeral director? He doesn’t charge for advice.

Do you have a good funeral experience to share? Or a bad one?

Is there a particularly good or an especially bad funeral director you would like to tell him about?

Do you have views about funerals and the funeral industry that you would like to share?

Email or ring Charles. His phone number is: 07557 684 515. This is a mobile number.

"I look forward to hearing from you" - Charles Cowling

Review from Cerrig

I came to this book via the website of the same name, and got it this pm. I sat down just to look quickly through it and got up over two hours later, having read the lot. It's an even better job than you'd hope from the highly informative and entertaining website. The book will really help you if someone has just died, but it's even more valuable if you read it well before someone close to you dies. And therein lies an element of its value: it is part of a changing attitude towards death, as well as being a crisply-written, eminently practical guide to funerals if you are about plan one. I'm a funeral celebrant, and it will further shape and guide my practice. It is quite remarkably fair-minded and well-balanced, in a field fraught with prejudices, strong feelings, and fierce commercial self-interest. It also has flashes of the wit and originality you'd expect from the website.
But: take heed! When the author warns you that a specific part of the book is not for the squeamish. He means it, although it's lightly stated. That's not just the sort of squeamish as in when you're watching a movie. If you have just lost someone close to you and if you don't have an unusually bracing and robust attitude towards dead bodies, then the bits labelled "not for the squeamish" are, I'd say, to be avoided.
That's one big reason why we should read this book before we have to! It's hard to be objective about such things when you're reeling from a sudden bereavement. But getting to grips with them in advance might help with bereavement, when the time comes.
The book is also full of very useful practical information, leads and links. And it is surprisingly reassuring.
A really excellent job, for which we should feel grateful. Not everyone in the death business will like it - which is an excellent sign - and I'd say you could use the book itself like a canary down a coal mine: if a funeral director, priest or celebrant takes exception to what the book says, get out quick, he's only interested in your wallet, not your feelings. (Well, liike a reverse canary then, i.e. the canaries died whereas... Oh, I'm sure you get the point!)

Review from Cara

This book is wonderfully insightful into the secret world of the funeral profession.
It enables people to get answers to the questions that they have and also the book breaks through some of the emotive language used by the funeral industry.
It sets out in a very clear methodical way things that you may need or want to know when preparing a funeral...........be that your own funeral, supporting another or just out of pure interest.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to lift the coffin lid and learn more of what goes on.

Review from Limow

I ordered this book mid morning on Saturday and it arrived first thing Monday morning - I was totally amazed! This is very reassuring if you have a funeral to plan and feel that you don't have much time to research all your options, you do! It's an easy read and in fact very hard to put down! Great advice given to ensure that you have all the facts at your fingertips to make the right decisions for your loved one's final goodbye.