Zoe Clark-Coates: re-enchanting life and loss

Sharing her own experience of baby loss, Zoe talks with Belle and Justin about grief, sorrow and faith.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A woman leans on a table, talking into a microphone.

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Zoe Clark-Coates MBE has become one of the UK's most trusted voices when it comes to the gigantic topics of grief and loss. She is an author, podcaster and TV broadcaster, as well as the founder and CEO of the Mariposa Trust and co-chair of the most extensive government baby loss review in recent years. Zoe shares her own experience of grief, having lost five babies, and tells of how her faith and her sorrow have always been well acquainted.

For more on Zoe visit her web site.

For advice and support regarding some of the topics that have been mentioned in this episode, visit the Saying Goodbye web site.

For Government Issued Certificates of Baby Loss (UK) visit GOV.UK.

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Podcast

Culture

Death & life

Podcasts

Re-enchanting

12 February 2025

1 min read

Dame Sue Black: re-enchanting death

The leading forensic scientist talks with Justin and Belle about her work and our reluctance to look death in the eye.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A woman guest on a podcast sits at a table with a mic in front, gesturing to the side with both hands.

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Professor Lady Sue Black is one of the world’s leading forensic scientists. Police forces, the Foreign Office and the UN have called upon her evidence in countless high-profile investigations. She is currently President of St. John’s College, Oxford, and in 2021 entered the House of Lords as a cross-bench peer.

She has penned numerous books, including the Saltire Prize winning All That Remains: A Life in Death and her latest book, Written in Bone: hidden stories in what we leave behind. In 2024, Professor Lady Black was also appointed to the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle – the highest honour in Scotland.

In this episode of Re-Enchanting, Justin and Belle speak to Sue about her first time working on a dead body, the stories that our bodies tell after death, her work in the wake of the Kosovo war and the 2004 tsunami, and - ultimately - how our reluctance to look death in the eye is profoundly hurting us.

There’s more to life than the world we can see. Re-Enchanting is a podcast from Seen & Unseen recorded at Lambeth Palace Library, the home of the Centre for Cultural Witness. Justin Brierley and Belle Tindall engage faith and spirituality with leading figures in science, history, politics, art and education. Can our culture be re-enchanted by the vision of Christianity?