Eulogies: How to Craft and Deliver Memorable Farewells

Honouring the memory of a loved one who has died is one of life’s privileges. To weave the threads of a human life into a tapestry of images that form in the minds of our hearers and so give their mind’s eye one last glimpse of the one they honour can be at the same time humbling and immensely rewarding.

An eulogy - or "good word" - is an event much more than it is a speech. It is a shared moment in which mourners gather around pictures painted by the words the speaker utters, and the emotions the speaker conveys, so that they may linger in their personal and shared remembering of the one who has died.

This course offers immediate practical advice to people who find themselves, perhaps unexpectedly, preparing to deliver the “good word”. It draws on the author’s experience in speaking at funerals of friends and family members, and as the minister of a London church. It shows how to gather the raw material, how to organise it, how to craft it into an eulogy, and then how to prepare and deliver the eulogy so that it engages the minds and emotions of those who hear it.