Bread and War: A Ukrainian Story of Food, Bravery and Hope

with Felicity Spector

Death has always shaped how we live — but not always in the ways we expect.

In No Ordinary Deaths, historian and bereavement counsellor Molly Conisbee uncovers the hidden history of mortality from the perspective of ordinary people. Moving beyond royal funerals and headline-making assassinations, she explores how everyday lives ended — and how families and communities grieved — across centuries of British history.

From medieval death-watchers to Victorian mourning fashion, via plague pits, grave-robbers and village wakes, Conisbee shows how past societies lived with death as a daily presence. With insight drawn from her work at the Centre for Death and Society, she asks what we’ve lost in today’s more distanced approach — and what older, communal rituals might offer in helping us die, and mourn, well.