London funerals have a very different quality from country funerals.
They're more intense, and feel slightly unhealthy. They have something of the quality of a hangover. But they're also solid and grand.
I recently went to the funeral of a friend, a poet, who died in his fifties. He went to paradise by way of Kensal Green: he was cremated at the General Cemetery of All Souls in London, Wio, built in 1833, three years. Kensal Green was the first of London's new ‘garden’ cemeteries, based on Paris's Père Lachaise.
