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Hello, our subject today is what the 16th century philosopher Francis Bacon called the least of all evils

Death a subject which is provoked thousands of reflections which live on how has the perception dread or even desire for our

Ending shape the development of the culture of Europe and the West and I have different eras addressed the essential

existential problems that death presents us with with me is the poet essayist and undertaker Thomas Lynch

He made an international impact with the first book of essays the undertaking two years ago

And is just publishing his new collection bodies in motion and at rest

I'm also joined by the professor of English literature and director of Exeter College Oxford, Marilyn Butler and by Jonathan Dolemore

professor of English literature at York University and author of death desire and loss in Western culture

Jonathan Dolemore in your book you claim that death is central to the development of Western culture just to get some kind of

shape and definition to it. Is it peculiarly

significant in Western culture or do you see it in other cultures? It certainly is in other cultures

But perhaps we should stick with Western culture and I think we also need to say what we mean by death

There is obviously the question of my death or the existential question of how one lives in the face of the universal fact of death

But for artists and philosophers, it's a deeper question

It's to do not just with mortality in that sense

But the fact that we live in a world which is governed by change by time a

World which is subjected to the tyranny of time a world in which we experience constantly the trauma of loss and I would argue that actually

Major strands of art philosophy and certainly theology are rooted in this profound sense of dissatisfaction with the world in which we live

So death has to be understood in terms of these larger concepts like mutability change and the destructive effects of time

Inside the Western tradition that you were talking about would you put the Christian idea of

...