They told us that they had gone out to learn about the delivery of palliative medicines but that they were struck most not by the difficulties that face medical practitioners in the developing world in delivering adequate palliation in challenging circumstances of high mortality rates and severe poverty, but by the way in which death and bereavement is celebrated in those cultures.Another CPG meeting was on the history of death and dying in Scotland, and I was amazed to learn just how much of an impact the reformation had in creating the closed culture around death that still pervades Scottish society today.