Henry Scott-Holland

Henry Scott-Holland (1847 - 1918), was a priest at St. Paul's Cathedral of London and a Professor of Divinty at Oxford University. While at St Paul's Cathedral, Holland delivered a sermon in May 1910 following the death of King Edward VII, titled Death the King of Terrors, in which he explores the natural but seemingly contradictory responses to death: the fear of the unexplained and the belief in continuity. It is from this sermon that his best-known writing in modern times, Death is nothing at all, is taken. Ironically, the intended message of the complete sermon and the message of the poem are quite different.