The art of dying.

Can art help people prepare for death? As well as making a personal journey through the deaths of his own relatives, Dan Cruickshank explores various ways, throughout history, that death has been depicted in art. Sister Wendy Beckett doesn't feel that religious depictions of death make any difference to her faith or her feelings about death. Artist Maggi Hambling describes how she feels when she makes pictures of dead people. Obituaries editor Nick Serpell writes an obituary for Cruickshank and Cruickshank reviews it. Sculptor Jamie McCartney makes a death mask of Cruickshank and describes what it is like making a cast from a dead person. Artist Kathe Kollwitz spent 18 years creating a memorial to her son, killed during the Slaughter of the Innocents; Cruickshank visits it.