BROADCASTS.com

Former Bishop Richard Holloway, author of My Father\u2019s Wake Kevin Toolis and palliative care consultant Kathryn Mannix join Philip Dodd to consider mortality. \u201cIn this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes\u201d Benjamin Franklin once wrote, but as we face the final curtain what can death teach us about ourselves and the ones we love?

Richard Holloway is a writer, broadcaster and cleric, formerly Bishop of Edinburgh. His books include A Little History of Religion and Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt.

Kathryn Mannix is a pioneer of palliative medicine, who has worked in hospices, hospitals and patients\u2019 homes, helping enhance people\u2019s quality of life as they near death. Kathryn started the UK\u2019s first CBT clinic exclusively for palliative care patients. Her new book With the End in Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial explores the process of dying.

Kevin Toolis is a BAFTA winning filmmaker who has encountered death often in his work as a foreign correspondent in places of famine, war and plague all around the world. In his memoir My Father\u2019s Wake: How the Irish Teach us to Live, Love and Die Kevin asks \u2018Why have we lost our way with death?\u2019 He offers both an intimate account of his father\u2019s death and a history of the Irish way of dying.

Producer: Debbie Kilbride