Have you popped into your local, neighbourhood Death Café recently? No, it's not a new franchise with baristas offering to add a dash of arsenic to your daily caffeine spike. Nor is it a high street variation on Dignitas where you can enjoy an espresso with your euthanasia.

One thing we all have in common: we're going to die. We won't all get married, have children or see Niagara Falls. But every single one of us will die. Yet the vast majority of us only think about death when we have to.

Diamorphine is regularly used in palliative care, clinical medicine and addiction psychiatry.

It is often said that English people do not like to talk about death. Last week's publication of the first national survey of the bereaved has gone some way to dispelling such a notion.