Episodes
Valediction Forbidding Mourning by Katy Walker
THE STORY This piece takes its name from John Donne’s poem of the same name. I checked my emails on the way home from a conference on antibiotic resistance and there was a round robin email asking for my
My Immortal Mother by Carol Cooper
THE STORY Some writers say they have a ‘knot’ they keep worrying at that makes them write. Maybe my mother, Wendy, has been my knot. I always knew I would write about her after her death, when I was
An Ordered Life by Philip Shelley
THE STORY …is a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of my own father, who died 4 years ago. The trigger for this whole project though was the death of my mother who died in March. The moment when your second parent dies
Turning by Marilyn Court-Lewis
THE STORY A woman and her older sister, both in their late thirties, go back to Wales to visit their long-widowed father as he lies dying in his hospital bed. All three are estranged from each other and as
The Name on The Bench by David Hendon
THE STORY The year 2016 has seen a seemingly high number of notable deaths with inevitable eulogies and tributes following. I wanted to write about someone completely anonymous to the world at large but who meant something to those
A Great Man by Ben Weiner
THE STORY James Bellwether wonders how many people were called before someone picked up the phone to him to tell him that his own Dad was dying. That is what it is like being the child of a ‘great’
Grandpa by Daniel Brierley
THE STORY My tribute is actually based on parts of the life of my granddad Alan who sadly passed away in April 2016. The character is actually an amalgam of all of my grandparents- my English grandma was a
Rex by Louise Vale
THE STORY Tributes are usually given by family members so my starting point was, “What if there isn’t any surviving family? Why might that be?” This led me to the idea of a character who had murdered his family,
Eulogy for Tricia Slater by Sarah Penrose
THE WRITER: SARAH PENROSE + THE STORY I have spent a lot of years with a scattergun approach to life, doing a bit of this and a bit of that, but always leaning towards my creative side. I worked
Bookmark by Robin Bell
THE STORY The catalyst of my Tribute was a bookmark. I wanted my tribute to focus on the emotions that death/bereavement brings up. Death is so unfathomable our brain pulls in many different ways to understand it. The emotion
An Irresistible Force by Will Mount
THE STORY I met a sculptor on Twitter who told me that before unveiling her latest work she had to chop a piece off her statue because it offended a surviving relative of the subject. The ceremony would not
A Tribute to Marcie Lane by Liz Taylor
THE STORY There are a few hats that I currently wear but I’m a mum first and foremost and I couldn’t imagine my life without my lovely boy. I still can’t quite believe I’ve got him and the idea
Milestone by Tony Clare
THE STORY I originally wrote Milestone several years ago – before the Hillsborough Inquest was announced. When the Inquest verdicts were delivered I realised I could adapt the script with just a very small number of changes. I liked