Three years before David Bowie’s death in New York in 2016, the curators of London’s V&A exhibition David Bowie Is published a list of his favourite books.
Among the inevitable philosophers, artists and beats there were a few surprises (Stephen King, for one), but none more so than The American Way of Death by the US-based English writer Jessica Mitford, published in 1963. The book, a bestseller at the time, was an exposé of the American funeral business revealing how the “dismal trade” of undertaking turned death into a booming industry.
Mitford died in 1996, while updating the text: she had opted for a cheap funeral with no ceremony. Bowie went further by bowing out with a direct cremation within hours of his demise. It was a worthy antidote to the vigils that followed, as middle-aged fans with Aladdin Sane make-up prostrated themselves before a badly drawn Bowie mural in Brixton. Last year Karl Lagerfeld settled on the same option despite …