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Terry heeft, naar aanleiding van het debat over "assisted suicide" zoals dat momenteel woedt in GB, een duidelijk standpunt laten horen:

I'll die before the endgame, says Terry Pratchett in call for law to allow assisted suicides in UK

By Terry Pratchett
Last updated at 1:29 AM on 03rd August 2009


_{Pledge: Terry Pratchett revealed his views on 'assisted death' by saying he hopes to be 'helped across the step'}

Sir Terry Pratchett has made an emotional plea for the right to take his own life, saying: 'I live in hope I can jump before I am pushed.'

The fantasy novelist gave his views following last week's landmark House of Lords controversial judgment in the case of Debbie Purdy.

'I believe that if the burden gets too great, those who wish should be allowed to be shown the door,' he said. 'In my case, in the fullness of time, I hope it will be in the garden under an English sky. Or, if wet, the library.'

Sir Terry, 61, author of the hugely successful Discworld books, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's diseasein 2007.

He said that no one has a duty to suffer the extremes of terminal illness and set down his admiration for the sick and dying who have travelled to Switzerland to die in legal suicide clinics. They have displayed ' furious sanity', he said.

The Lords ruled on Thursday that the Director of Public Prosecutions must give Mrs Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, guidance on whether her husband will face prosecution - and a possible 14-year prison sentence - if he helps her travel to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich to die.

The judgment means the DPP is likely to set down rules which will clear those who do not have selfish motives from the threat of prosecution - a major step towards legalisation.

Sir Terry, who was knighted in the 2009 New Year Honours, said in an article in the Mail on Sunday: 'I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod.

'Oh, and since this is England, I had better add, "If wet, in the library". Who could say that this is bad?'

Sir Terry said he would be happy to accept help from the medical profession. He said he had no doubt that there were people with a 'passion for caring', but asked them to accept there are people 'who have a burning passion not to need to be cared for'.

The author rejected the idea that allowing assisted suicide would amount to legalising euthanasia, in which those unwilling to die would be killed off.

He said some ways of looking after those with chronic illnesses, including forcible or 'peg' feeding of Alzheimer's sufferers, were degradpulsorying and painful. 'I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.'

Sir Terry added: 'I have seen people profess to fear that the existence of a formalised approach to assisted dying could lead to it somehow becoming part of national health policy.

'I very much doubt this could be the case. We are a democracy and no democratic government is going to get anywhere with a policy of comor even recommended euthanasia.

'If we were ever to end up with such a government, we would be in so much trouble that the problem would become the least of our worries. But neither do I believe in a duty to suffer the worst ravages of terminal illness.'

Peers voted heavily against a parliamentary move to allow assisted suicide last month. Sir Terry backed the reform, put forward by former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, which would have allowed relatives or friends to escort dying relatives to a suicide in Switzerland with the approval of two doctors.

However since then the main nursing union, the Royal College of Nursing, has withdrawn its opposition to assisted suicide.

More than 100 Britons have died at the Dignitas clinic, taking advantage of Swiss tolerance of suicide. Most recently conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife Joan died in Zurich, in the presence of their two children.

Lady Downes was dying of cancer but Sir Edward, while frail, was not suffering from a terminal illness.

Point me to heaven when the final chapter comes...
Terry Pratchett's deeply personal plea

We are being stupid. We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still. At least, that is what I thought until last week.

Now, however, I live in hope - hope that before the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am pushed and drag my evil Nemesis to its doom, like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty locked in combat as they go over the waterfall.

In any case, such thinking bestows a wonderful feeling of power; the enemy might win but it won't triumph.


_{Plea: Things like pride, self-respect and human dignity are worthy of preservation, says Discworld author Terry Pratchett}


Last week a poll revealed that more than three-quarters of people in Britain approve of assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

On Thursday, the Law Lords delivered the landmark judgment in a case brought by multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy, who feared her husband would be prosecuted if he accompanied her to die abroad.

She wanted the law on assisted dying to be clarified and the Law Lords have now ordered the Director of Public Prosecutions to draw up policy spelling out when prosecutions would and would not be pursued.

It looks as though the baby boomers have spoken and some of them, at least, hope they die before they get old - well, too old. Some have seen what happened to their parents or grandparents, and they don't like it. Every day I remember my own father's death. The nurses were kind, but there was something very wrong about it.

The poll result arrived at about the same time as the Royal College of Nursing announced that it was ending its opposition to assisted dying. Other signs indicate that the medical profession as a whole is at least prepared to face the issue.

I hate the term 'assisted suicide'. I have witnessed the aftermath of two suicides, and as a journalist I attended far too many coroners' inquests, where I was amazed and appalled at the many ways that desperate people find to end their lives.

Suicide is fear, shame, despair and grief. It is madness.

Those brave souls lately seeking death abroad seem to me, on the other hand, to be gifted with a furious sanity. They have seen their future, and they don't want to be part of it.

But for me, the scandal has not been solely that innocent people have had the threat of murder hanging over their heads for committing a clear act of mercy. It is that people are having to go to another country to die; it should be possible to die with benign assistance here.

You do not have to read much social history, or move in medical circles, to reach the conclusion that the profession has long seen it as part of its remit to help the dying die more comfortably.

Victorians expected to die at home, undoubtedly assisted by the medical profession.

In those days there was no such thing as drug control - just as there was no gun control. Laudanum and opiates were widespread and everyone knew you could get your hands on them. Sherlock Holmes was one of them!

As a young journalist I once listened in awe as a 90-year-old former nurse told me how she helped a dying cancer patient into the great beyond with the help of a pillow.


_{Consolation: Terry in his Wiltshire garden with a brandy - the way he would like to be able to spend his final conscious moments}

In the absence of any better medication in that time and place, and with his wife in hysterics at the pain he was forced to endure, death was going to be a friend; it was life, life gone wild, that was killing him.

'We called it "pointing them to Heaven",' she told me.

Decades later, I mentioned this to another, younger nurse, who gave me a blank look, and then said: 'We used to call it "showing them the way".'

Then she walked off quickly, aware that she had left a hostage to fortune.

I have been told that doctors do not like patients to worry that, theoretically, their GP has the expertise to kill them. Really?

I suspect that even my dentist has the means to kill me. It does not worry me in the slightest, and I imagine that, like many other people, I would be very happy for the medical profession to help me over the step.

I have written a living will to that effect, and indeed this article in The Mail on Sunday will be evidence of my determination in this matter. I cannot make the laws but you have no idea how much I hope those in a position to do so will listen.

In the course of the past few years, I have met some delightful people who say they have a passion for caring and I have no reason whatsoever to doubt them. Can they accept, however, that there are some people who have a burning passion not to need to be cared for?

It appears to be an item of faith with many people I have spoken to that both doctors and nurses, at least in hospital, still have 'things they can do' when the patient is in extremis.

I certainly hope this is true, but I wish we could blow away the clouds obscuring the issue and embrace the idea of ending, at their request, the life of a terminally ill person at a time and, if possible, a place of their choosing.

I write this as someone who has, regrettably, become famous for having Alzheimer's. Although being famous is all the rage these days, it's fame I could do without.

I know enough to realise there will not be a cure within my lifetime and I know the later stages of the disease can be very unpleasant. Indeed, it's the most feared disease among the over-65s.

Naturally, I turn my attention to the future. There used to be a term known as 'mercy killing'. I cannot believe it ever had any force in law but it did, and still does, persist in the public consciousness, and in general the public consciousness gets it right.

We would not walk away from a man being attacked by a monster, and if we couldn't get the ravening beast off him we might well conclude that some instant means of less painful death would be preferable before the monster ate him alive.


_{Family man: Terry Pratchett with his daughter Rhianna in 1998}

And certainly we wouldn't tuck it up in bed with him and try to carry on the fight from there, which is a pretty good metaphor for what we do now, particularly with 'old-timers' disease.

(My speech-to-text programme persists in transcribing Alzheimer's as 'old-timers'. In fact, I've heard many people absent-mindedly doing the same thing, and as a writer, I cannot help wondering if the perception of the disease might be a little kinder without that sharp, Germanic intonation.)

My father was a man well tuned to the public consciousness. The day before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer he told me: 'If you ever see me in a hospital bed with tubes and pipes all over me, then tell them to turn me off.'

There was no chance of that a year later, when medicine's defences had been used up and he was becoming a battleground between the cancer and the morphine.

I have no idea what might have been going through his head, but why did we have to go through with this? He had been told he had a year to live, the year was up, and he was a practical man; he knew why he had been taken to the hospice.

Why could we not have had the Victorian finale, perhaps just a week or so earlier, with time for words of love and good advice, and tears just before the end?

It would have made something human and understandable out of what instead became surreal. It was not the fault of the staff; they were, like us, prisoners of a system.

At least my father's problem was pain, and pain can be controlled right until the end.

But I do not know how you control a sense of loss and the slow slipping of the mind away from the living body - the kind that old-timer's disease causes.

I know my father was the sort of man who didn't make a fuss, and perhaps I would not, either, if pain were the only issue for me. But it isn't.

I am enjoying my life to the full, and hope to continue for quite some time. But I also intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod - the latter because Thomas's music could lift even an atheist a little bit closer to Heaven - and perhaps a second brandy if there is time.

Oh, and since this is England I had better add: 'If wet, in the library.'

Who could say that is bad? Where is the evil here?

But, of course, important points are being made in this debate. Currently, people say they are worried about the possibility of old people being 'urged' by greedy relatives into taking an early death.

If we cannot come up with a means of identifying this, I would be very surprised.


_{Legal first: MS victim Debbie Purdy, pictured with husband Omar Puente, has persuaded the Law Lords to call for clarification of the law on assisted suicide}

In any case, in my experience it is pretty impossible to get an elderly person to do something they do not wish to do. They tend to know their own mind like the back of their hand, and quite probably would object to this being questioned.

There needs to be, for the safety of all concerned, some kind of gentle tribunal, to make certain that requests for assisted death are bona fide and not perhaps due to gentle persuasion.

It is the sort of thing, in my opinion, coroners could handle well. All the ones I have met have been former lawyers with much experience of the world and of the ways of human nature, people with wisdom, in fact, and that means middle-aged at the very least, and old enough to have some grasp of the world's realities.

I have no way of knowing whether any of them would wish to be involved; this is breaking new ground and we won't know unless we try.

In my early journalistic years, I watched such men deal with the deaths of thalidomide babies and the results of terrible accidents with calm and compassion. If their successors are as caring in their deliberations, I feel this may go some way to meeting the objections that people have.

And I would suggest, too, that Social Services be kept well away from any such arrangement. I don't think they would have much to offer.

In this country we have rather lost faith in the wisdom of ordinary people, among whom my father was a shining example. And it is ordinary people, ultimately, who must make such decisions.

There are those who will object that the care industry can cope. Even if we accept that they are coping now, which most of us will take on trust, in the coming decades they certainly will not be able to without a major reordering of our society.

The numbers tell us this. We already have a situation where elderly people are being cared for at home by people who themselves are of pensionable age. The healthcare system will become messy, and the NHS will struggle to cope.

There are care homes, of course, and they are subject to inspection, and we must take it on trust that the inspection system has teeth, but would you know how to choose one? Would you know what questions to ask?

Would you know, if you suffer from Alzheimer's disease or are representing someone who is, whether the place you would be choosing resorts to 'peg feeding'?

Peg feeding is the forcible feeding of patients who refuse food. I found out about this only recently, and I'm afraid it has entirely coloured my views.

These are, after all, innocent people who are on the road to death, and yet someone thinks it is right to subject them to this degrading and painful business.

The Alzheimer's Society says peg feeding is 'not best practice', a rather diplomatic statement.


_{A kindly angel: Death, as portrayed in a scene from the Sky TV adaptation of Pratchett's Discworld novel The Hogfather}

People there that I trust tell me the main problem with the treatment of acute Alzheimer's cases is not a lack of care and goodwill as such, but insufficient numbers of people who are skilled in the special needs of the terminally-ill Alzheimer's patient.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it.

As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of 'life at any cost'. Apparently there is already such a thing as an official 'quality of life index': I don't know whether the fact that we have one frightens me more than the possibility that we don't.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

But the Death of the Discworld is a little more unusual. He has become popular - after all, as he patiently explains, it is not he who kills. Guns and knives and starvation kill; Death turns up afterwards, to reassure the puzzled arrivals as they begin their journey.

He is kind; after all, he is an angel. And he is fascinated with us, in the way in which we make our little lives so complicated, and our strivings. So am I.

Within a year or two, I started to get letters about Death. They came from people in hospices, and from their relatives and from bereaved individuals, and from young children in leukaemia wards, and the parents of boys who had crashed their motorbikes.

I recall one letter where the writer said the books were of great help to his mother when she was in a hospice. Frequently, the bereaved asked to be allowed to quote some part of the Discworld books in a memorial service.

They all tried to say, in some way, 'thank you', and until I got used to it, the arrival of one of these letters would move me sufficiently to give up writing for the day.

The bravest person I've ever met was a young boy going through massive amounts of treatment for a very rare, complex and unpleasant disease. I last saw him at a Discworld convention, where he chose to take part in a game as an assassin. He died not long afterwards, and I wish I had his fortitude and sense of style.

I would like to think my refusal to go into care towards the end of my life might free up the resources for people such as him.

Let me make this very clear: I do not believe there is any such thing as a 'duty to die'; we should treasure great age as the tangible presence of the past, and honour it as such.

I know that last September Baroness Warnock was quoted, or possibly misquoted, as saying the very elderly sick had a 'duty to die', and I have seen people profess to fear that the existence of a formalised approach to assisted dying could lead to it somehow becoming part of national health policy.

I very much doubt this could be the case. We are a democracy and no democratic government is going to get anywhere with a policy of compulsory or even recommended euthanasia. If we were ever to end up with such a government, we would be in so much trouble that the problem would become the least of our worries.

But neither do I believe in a duty to suffer the worst ravages of terminal illness.

As an author, I've always tended to be known only to a circle of people - quite a large one, I must admit - who read books. I was not prepared for what happened after I 'came out' about having Alzheimer's in December 2007, and appeared on television.

People would stop me in the street to tell me their mother had it, or their father had it. Sometimes, it's both parents, and I look into their eyes and I see a flash of fear.

In London the other day, a beefy man grabbed my arm, smiled at me and said, 'Thanks a lot for what you're doing, my mum died from it,' and disappeared into the crowd.

And, of course, there have been the vast numbers of letters and emails, some of which, I'm ashamed to say, will perhaps never be answered.

People do fear, and not because fear is whipped up, but because they've recalled an unpleasant death in their family history.

Sometimes I find myself involved in strange conversations, because I am an amiable-looking person who people think they know and, importantly, I am not an authority figure - quite the reverse.

I have met Alzheimer's sufferers who are hoping that another illness takes them away first. Little old ladies confide in me, saying: 'I've been saving up my pills for the end, dear.'

What they are doing, in fact, is buying themselves a feeling of control. I have met retired nurses who have made their own provisions for the future with rather more knowledgeable deliberation.

From personal experience, I believe the recent poll reflects the views of the people in this country. They don't dread death; it's what happens beforehand that worries them.

Life is easy and cheap to make. But the things we add to it, such as pride, self-respect and human dignity, are worthy of preservation, too, and these can be lost in a fetish for life at any cost.

I believe that if the burden gets too great, those who wish to should be allowed to be shown the door.

In my case, in the fullness of time, I hope it will be the one to the garden under an English sky. Or, if wet, the library.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.u(...)K.html#ixzz0N9DEl0Mt

--------------------------------------

On a happier note:

Volgens de Discworld Newsletter is men bezig met Going Postal en wordt deze volgend jaar uitgezonden op Sky1.

Going Postal adaptation SKY1 Easter 2010
Sky1 will be showing Going Postal in Easter 2010. The latest cast list is as follows:

* Richard Coyle - Moist Von Lipwig
* David Suchet - Reacher Gilt
* Charles Dance - Lord Vetinari
* Claire Foy - Adora Belle Dearheart
* Andrew Sachs - Tolliver Groat
* Tamsin Greig - Miss Cripslock
* Steve Pemberton - Rufus Drumknott
* John Henshaw - Mr Pony
* Madhav Sharma - Horsefry
* Jimmy Yuill - Mr Spools
* Ian Bonar - Stanley
* Paul Barber - Dave
* Adrian Schiller - Gryle
* Daniel Cerquiera - Trooper
* Ingrid Bolso Berdal - Sergeant Angua
* Kerry Shale - Mr Pump (voice)
* Ben Crompton - Mad Al
* Asif Khan - Sane Alex
* Alex Parks - Roger
* Sheila Shand Ginns - Old Lady

Alstublieft

Ik zie overigens nu pas dat ik klakkeloos een slordige fout van de Daily Mail heb overgenomen. In de caption onder het plaatje van Death wordt gesproken over 'The Hogfather', terwijl boek en film gewoon 'Hogfather' heten

Hier een video-interview van de BBC met Terry over hoe hij wil sterven.

En op een conferentie van de Liberal-Democrats heeft Terry eveneens over zijn ziekte gesproken.

En een fake-trailer voor een niet bestaande Guards! Guards! film

Een bericht van Terry in de Discworld Monthly:

quote:

DIGNITY IN DYING

Folks,

I expect that most of you know that I am determined to die
peacefully in my own garden before my Alzheimer's has reached its
most unpleasant stage, which might still be quite some time away.
That is why I am now a patron of Dignity in Dying and my new
friends there have asked me to pass on this link to a petition to
properly legalise well regulated assisted dying in the UK. It has
been put together by people who know their stuff and have some
political awareness; if it had been written by me the paper would
have burst into flames because I believe the religious right,
having lost the original suicide debate in the 60s/70s and the
abortion debate in the 60s are really getting behind this one and
are portraying what could be a carefully and sympathetically
delivered service to people with serious, debilitating and
untreatable diseases as if it's an open door to a nationwide cull
of old people. Their arguments are frequently pernicious and
highly objectionable and must be combated.

Click HERE to sign the petition.

Many thanks.

Terry Pratchett

En een wat luchtiger stukje:

quote:

Folks,

I had a lovely letter the other day from very religious lady
concerned about my health. She said that I should consider my
Alzheimer's a gift from God. Frankly, I would have preferred a
sweater...

Coming back from the North American Discworld Convention has
hardly been a rest and so my own personal con report and
additional thanks has had to be delayed. More on that later.

On the up side, the progress on I Shall Wear Midnight is rapid,
thanks to Dragon Dictate and rather more to the guys at
TalkingPoint - the front end that makes it much easier to use -
who made contact with me through this very page. I'm so impressed
by it, that if my typing ability came back overnight, I would
continue to use it. I have no hesitation in praising the product
as I have already paid for two licenses and a year's maintenance.
Anyway, we have to do this stuff otherwise what was the point of
Star Trek?

The next few weeks are pretty well stuffed with things to do
regarding Unseen Academicals and the celebration football match in
Wincanton at which I shall break my life long vow of never
watching a game of football.

The next big public thing in our diary is the Irish Discworld
convention, which takes in the Falls Hotel in Ennistymon Co. Clare
from the 6th to 9th November. http://idwcon.org/

More later,

In The Guardian van 28/9 heeft Terry nogmaals zijn visie gegeven op euthanasie en de regels die daarvoor gelden in de UK:

quote:

Discworld author Terry Pratchett has spoken out against new guidelines on assisted suicide which were issued last week.

The guidelines do not provide immunity from prosecution – assisting suicide carries a prison sentence of up to 14 years – but are intended to offer clear advice to the relatives of people wishing to kill themselves about whether they would face prosecution.

Pratchett, who revealed in 2007 he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's, said yesterday the new guidelines had him "a little more angry". "No one is really happy with them," he told the BBC Politics Show West. "It would appear they are suggesting that people could help you kill yourself, and then the police would investigate as an act of murder and decide whether or not this was really the case, which seems a very lame way of doing things."

The bestselling fantasy author suggested instead "that there should be possibly some kind of non-aggressive tribunal system where someone who, for whatever reasons, wishes to end their life – and I would only really accept medical reasons, I must say – can make their points to a magistrate or a coroner, along with the medical evidence on which they wish to end their life". This, Pratchett felt, would "protect the vulnerable", and "could weed out the hypothetical granny who is being urged by her heirs to commit suicide, so they can get their hands on her money".

Pratchett said that he himself was "feeling fine", and that although he can no longer drive a car or use a typewriter, he is continuing to write using a speech-to-text programme. "I can now talk to the typewriter and get the work done," he said. Pratchett's new Discworld novel, Unseen Academicals, is published in October.

"The reason I wish to end my life is because of a medical condition – it's not bad yet and I'm full of the joys of spring, but it will eventually get very bad and Alzheimer's is the most feared disease among the over-60s. It is not nice. I do not wish to be there for the endgame," Pratchett said. "I spoke to a doctor who told me when he was a young doctor he walked through a ward of terminal Alzheimer's patents who effectively were not there any more, and he wondered why they were being kept alive, when there was very little there to keep alive."

A 12-week consultation on the new guidelines is currently ongoing, with the finalised policy to be announced next spring.

En op dezelfde dag in The Telegraph, een bespreking van Unseen Academicals, dat uiteraard leidt tot een gesprek met Terry over zijn ziekte:

quote:

Recently, Sir Terry Pratchett has been having a recurring nightmare. He finds himself in a strange city where all the buildings are derelict and everything is bathed in a thin grey light. ‘It’s like a southerner’s idea of Leeds, if you know what I mean.’

In his dream, he wanders around trying to find somewhere familiar. ‘On one occasion I found myself in a building and I looked out of the window and saw this steam engine on some tracks.

'The next time I was on the train, but I couldn’t get out of the carriage. And then the time after, I crawled up this embankment to where the train was, only to find the rails had been cut off at either end.’ What did you make of that? I ask. He chuckles. ‘Well, I think I know a metaphor when I see one.’

Pratchett lives in a narrow Wiltshire valley with a stream running through it and sheep munching on the hillsides. When he opens the door of his studio – a tiny, white-bearded figure in his usual black shirt and trousers – he looks thoroughly fed up.

‘I hadn’t realised there were going to be so many of you,’ he mutters – there are five of us, including the photographer and his two assistants. ‘Mind you, when Panorama came to see me, there were 25 of the buggers.’

He leads the way into his studio. It’s done out in a vaguely ecclesiastical style with a vaulted roof, oak beams and two enormous lecterns with dripping candles attached. In one room is his desk with six computer screens arranged around it like a bay window – he works on them simultaneously.

In the other is a black leather chair. Mounted above it is the specially designed helmet that fires bursts of infra-red light into his head to try to reverse the effects of posterior cortical atrophy – a form of Alzheimer’s – with which Pratchett was diagnosed in 2007 when he was 59.

What makes the most immediate impression, though, is a strong smell of mice. ‘They’re unavoidable in a place like this,’ he says. Maybe so, but surprisingly, given what a fastidious, even fussy, man Pratchett is, the place is also very dirty. There is thick dust around the edges of the rugs and the lavatory looks as if it hasn’t seen any bleach in a long while.

We sit down next to the helmet, and a woman who might be the housekeeper, or possibly Lady Pratchett (no indication is given), asks if we would like coffee. ‘I’ll have brandy in mine,’ says Pratchett, which again seems quite odd, given that it’s only 11.30 in the morning.

It’s tempting to ascribe some of this to the effects of the PCA. But as Pratchett talks, it soon becomes clear that there’s nothing wrong with his vocabulary, or his fluency.

Periodically, though not very often, he’ll break off in mid-sentence and there will be an awkward pause, and once or twice he comes up with some startling non sequiturs. However, I’m being quite truthful when I tell him later on that if I didn’t know he had PCA, I would never have guessed.

‘That’s because I talk,’ he says. ‘I can turn a phrase and actually I can turn a phrase bloody well when I want to. But if I took off this shirt and you threw it on the floor and perhaps pulled a sleeve inside out, I would be able to put it back on again, but you would see the celebration happening afterwards. It’s all to do with one’s apprehension of the world.

'My eyesight, as eyesight, is perfectly good. But how the brain deals with what my eyes can see can be pretty ropy. For instance, I might glance down and not see that cup on the floor. If you told me the cup was there, I would see it. However, the brain is filling up the space with something else. But because I come out with words properly used, like apprehension, you think there can’t be anything wrong with this guy.’

Do you think the helmet does any good? ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I just don’t know… Does it do me any harm? I don’t think so, and that’s the most I can say.’ Pratchett also takes Aricept, the only drug that’s shown some success in halting the progress of Alzheimer’s. As to whether that’s working, he doesn’t know either. ‘I’m not really sure how the PCA will develop – it’s very hard to tell.’

For much of his writing career, Pratchett has written an astonishing two novels a year, clocking up worldwide sales of 45 million. Now, he’s down to one. He no longer types – it was problems with typing that first prompted him to seek medical advice – but dictates into a speech-to-text programme that instantly transcribes his words into prose.

However, the quality has not suffered. Pratchett’s new novel, Unseen Academicals – out in October – is the 32nd novel in his Discworld series and fizzes as exuberantly as all the others. Meanwhile his last book, Nation – not one of the Discworld series – has been turned into a play by Mark Ravenhill and is opening at the National Theatre in November.

Nation is about a boy called Mau on a Pacific Island who believes he is the last person left alive in the world. Reading the book, it’s hard not to be struck by how vividly the boy’s sense of helplessness and isolation is evoked. It was also written around the time Pratchett’s Alzheimer’s was diagnosed and I found myself wondering if the boy’s emotions mirrored his own.

There are also several mentions of ‘shadow-worlds’ in the book. Anyone who saw Pratchett’s two-part television documentary, Living with Alzheimer’s, earlier this year, will recall him breaking off in the middle of a reading and saying he couldn’t carry on because ‘this shadow keeps falling across the page’.

‘Now hold on,’ says Pratchett when I mention this. ‘Could I correct you there? I swear I told my editor the outline of Nation some four years before I was diagnosed. But that said, and this is a thing that really puzzles me, I understand that PCA is something that can be with you for quite a long time before it’s diagnosed. So you do have to wonder if there are channels that we have no conception of.’

It’s plain that Terry Pratchett can be a touchy, abrasive man, keen to remind you of his erudition and intelligence. He has a fondness for words like ‘deleterious’ which he articulates with relish. It’s plain, too, that he is by no means without vanity – hence the black clothes, the matching fedora and the cane that he carries at Discworld conventions. To begin with, he wraps his arms tightly around his chest. But as he talks, he slowly relaxes and becomes less chippy, less defensive.

There’s also something of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland about him. When he was a boy, Pratchett says, he always had a sense that he had arrived at school about a week after everyone else. ‘It was as if they’d gone to all the orientation lectures and I could never quite get a grip of anything.’

He grew up in poverty in Beaconsfield, in a house with no bathroom, no electricity and no running water. A dreamy, introspective boy, he recalls his mother reminding him recently that, aged about six, he used to see people in colours. ‘Apparently I’d say things like, “I like Mrs So-an-so, she’s so purple.” And this would have nothing to do with what she happened to be wearing.’

It was around this time that he had a peculiar vision. Walking back from school one day, Pratchett went through a chalk pit.

‘As I climbed through the chalk pit, I saw these fish. They were like Jurassic fish – armour-plated things with bull-noses. And they were swimming in and out of the chalk as if they were underwater. That memory is as clear in my mind now as it was then. I can remember thinking, “Is this really happening, or what?’’’

This is a question that has hung over much of Pratchett’s subsequent life and work. As a child, he read extensively – mainly sci-fi and fantasy literature, which he bought from a shop in High Wycombe that specialised in soft porn and only sold sci-fi under the counter.

His first novel, The Carpet People, was written while he was working as a junior reporter at the Bucks Free Press. It started out as a weekly narrative to fill a column called the Children’s Corner, and it was only after several months that Pratchett realised – rather to his surprise – that he’d accumulated enough material for a book.

He went on to become the press officer for the Central Electricity Generating Board. ‘For years, I never thought much about being a writer. Periodically, I’d write a novel and it would be published and I’d get a little cheque. But it wasn’t until The Colour of Magic started to sell very well that it occurred to me that I appeared to be good at it.’

By then he had already embarked on what would turn into a magnum opus – his Discworld series. Set on a large disc resting on the backs of four giant elephants, supported by an even bigger turtle which is swimming through space, the books owe more to writers like Mark Twain and Jerome K Jerome than they do to conventional sci-fi.

‘I remember I got rather fed up with all the imitation Tolkien stuff that was coming out at the time. There was also a lot of medieval fantasy written by people who clearly had no idea what medieval life was actually like.

‘Basically, I decided to have fun with it. I must have read every issue of Punch published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour – that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like Three Men in a Boat.’

As to the question that his hordes of devoted fans never tire of asking, ‘Where does it all come from?’, Pratchett happily admits he doesn’t have a clue. ‘One of the delights of the job is controlled serendipity. I have lots of weird books like The History of False Teeth and The Frozen Water Trade in the Southern United States in the 18th Century.

'All this stuff streams down into me. My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots – and that process really hasn’t got any more difficult since my diagnosis.’

While Pratchett’s brain may be buzzing with snippets of arcane information, there’s nothing in the least chaotic about the way he works. ‘I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.’

What happens if you don’t write? Behind his round gold glasses, Pratchett looks quite blank. ‘Um… I really don’t know. I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.’

Over the last couple of years, Pratchett has turned from a famous writer into a public figure. Not only has he become a spokesman for Alzheimer’s research – he’s donated £500,000 to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust and has presented a petition to Gordon Brown asking for more funds – but he’s also taken up the cause of what he calls ‘assisted death’. He hates the phrase ‘assisted suicide’ because of the stigma still attached to suicide.

Nowadays, people are as likely to stop him in the street and ask him about dying as they are about his books. ‘It’s extraordinary, the number of people who come up to me. Secretly, I think everyone hopes that when they reach the end, a doctor or a nurse will give them a little extra dose of something.

'However, I do get a lot of weird Christians with a little red glint on their spectacles and spittle at the corner of their mouths who say things like, “The Commandment says, Thou Shalt Not Kill.” And I always say, “Well, that’s rather strange given how bloodthirsty Jehovah was.” Personally, I think the Commandment should read, Thou Shalt Commit No Murder, which is rather different. In any case, it’s all made-up.’

As for his own death, Pratchett insists that he is pretty sanguine about it – at least most of the time.

‘I can’t find a shred of fear about actual death. As for loss… yeah, I fear that. But I don’t fear death because there is nothing there. I don’t think you wake up and the heavenly host is looking down on you going, “Hah! You got that one wrong, didn’t you?” And not having that fear is a great release, I find. But I do fear a protracted death and loss of senses and loss of control and total dependence on other people. Of course I do.’

It’s time for Pratchett to have his photograph taken outside. Before he goes, I ask if I can take his phone number in case there is anything I need to check. He starts to give it to me, then his voice falters. Scrunching up his face and clearly making an enormous effort, he comes out with the remaining digits, as if he’s having to drag them up from the bottom of a deep dark hole.

* ‘Unseen Academicals’ by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday, RRP £18.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £16.99 plus £1.25 p+p. Call 0844 871 1516 or visit www.books.telegraph.co.uk

En een interview met Terry op de BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/breakfast/8302339.stm

Een radio-interview in het programma The Author Hour op VoiceAmerica:
http://theauthorhour.com/terry-pratchett/

In Engeland heeft de stad Wincanton in een nieuwe wijk straten vernoemd naar straten in Ankh-Morpork. De stad is ook officieel zusterstad Terry heeft de straatnamen onthuld. Lees hier een verslag.

[ Bericht 36% gewijzigd door Lord_Vetinari op 01-11-2009 11:07:15 ]

quote:

Op zondag 20 december 2009 02:45 schreef wonderer het volgende:

[..]



Verder ben ik bezig in The Hogfather (vaste prik ) en komt Nation deze kant op. Ben benieuwd.

quote:

Op zondag 20 december 2009 18:05 schreef wonderer het volgende:
Wat? Ik vind Charles Dance tof

Gewoon. Ik vind het niet tof dat je boektitels verkeerd schrijft.

Sir Terry heeft een award gekregen van het Writers Guild voor "Outstanding contribution to children's writing".

http://www.writersguild.o(...)397_WGGBNewsGui.html

LOL.

Ik zit net "Garfield & Friends" tekenfilms te kijken. Komt de aftiteling voorbij:

Model maker: Salene Weatherwax



Life imitating art

One of the most popular authors writing today, Sir Terry Pratchett, is to deliver BBC One's annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture on 1 February 2010.

This will be the 34th lecture held in honour of the veteran broadcaster who died in 1965.

The first novelist to give the lecture, Sir Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the bestselling Discworld series. The first Discworld novel, The Colour Of Magic, was published in 1983 and there are now 37 books in the series.

Regarded as a significant satirist, Pratchett has won numerous literary awards, was awarded an OBE in 1998, Knighted in 2009 and has received eight honorary doctorates. His novels have sold more than 65 million copies and have been translated into 37 languages.

In December 2007, he announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Since then, he has become Patron of The Alzheimer's Research Trust and has been closely involved in fundraising as well as making a sizeable donation to the charity himself.

In this keynote lecture, Shaking Hands With Death, Sir Terry Pratchett will explore how modern society, confronted with an increasingly older population, many of whom will suffer from incurable illnesses, will need to redefine how it deals with death.

Jay Hunt, Controller of BBC One, says: "I'm absolutely delighted that one of our most popular and best-loved authors has agreed to give this lecture. Sir Terry Pratchett has spoken with great bravery and honesty about his battle with Alzheimer's and I look forward to an intelligent and thought-provoking speech."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pres(...)ry/14/dimbleby.shtml

The National Theatre zendt een stuk over Nation live op 30 januari de wereld rond:

http://www.nationaltheatr(...)national-venues.html

The Live Show will include a couple of videos produced by young film
makers showing their interpretation of Mau and Daphne's first
meeting.

Review: Terry Pratchett On Nation

National Theatre Platform, 19th January 2010

Reviewed by Jessica Yates

Terry Pratchett was interviewed by Sarah LeFanu, former Artistic
Director of the Bath Literary Festival, who has interviewed him
several times before. The Olivier Theatre was very nearly full for
this early evening Platform, so that meant that approx. 1000 people
were there to hear Terry, many of whom had also booked to see Nation
that same evening.

Ms LeFanu revealed that 60 million copies of Discworld novels had
been sold (gasps and cheers), and that (as we knew) Terry had also
written a number of 'wonderful and varied novels for younger
readers'. Nation was a really big story, partly a love story, partly
a myth of origins, it asked big questions and turned the world
upside down.

Terry reminded her that she was in at the start. He was launching a
book several years ago, before the disastrous tsunami in 2004, and
he told her the germ of the story, about a boy raging against the
gods. When he had finished the books he was contracted to write, he
then told his agent he had to do this one; and never before had a
book dragged him along so much. Every time he needed some
information he had already got it from a lifetime of reading plus
useful contacts. He found a place which resembled the island - a
rainforest in Australia.

LeFanu went on with the story of how the National Theatre took over
the book for their next Christmas show for families, and Terry
commented that it was like taking a new toy away from a kid after he
has started to play with it. He gave the team advice - which they
took on board - and then threw overboard, as they kept saying that a
play is different from a book. 'A playwright has a whole orchestra
to play with - often literally - and I've got one lousy alphabet!'

LeFanu asked him if he was nervous when he first came to see the
show, and Terry replied that it felt like Wyatt Earp walking down a
quiet street in Tombstone. He could see the changes from the start,
but to be fair, putting more in would have made it longer. They
spoke of the challenge to young people to make their own film of the
tea-party scene, and Terry praised the winners who would have their
films shown before the live broadcast of Nation on Saturday 30th
January.

They now invited questions from the floor, and first Terry was asked
who his favourite character was. He replied that at present it was
Tiffany, as he is writing the fourth book about her, which will
bring her up to adulthood. After her, it would be Commander Vimes
(cheers). Would there be any more Johnny Maxwell books? Well,
you've got to have something to say (so probably not).

Which Discworld character do you feel your personality reflects?
Commander Vimes on a good day and ? Death of Rats? on a bad one
(sorry I couldn't quite hear that). Terry then went on to discuss
the differing portrayals of Death in the Discworld and Nation. In
the latter, Death was like Bergman's Death in The Seventh Seal. When
he saw that film on his Granny's TV it had a tremendous effect on
him.

Why is Nation set on a parallel world? 'It's my Get out of Jail Free
card' - readers won't be able to find the island on a map, and spot
any other inaccuracies. LeFanu commented on the wealth of background
material in the programme and summed up by saying that in the book
we are reading about ourselves, and that she hoped there would not
be many dry eyes in the theatre tonight.

The session ended with rapturous applause!

Sir Terry Pratchett to call for assisted suicide to be legalised



_{Sir Terry Pratchett will call for a tribunal to be set up where people can apply for legal permission to end their lives}


Sir Terry Pratchett will make a provocative call on BBC TV tonight for assisted suicide to be legalised.

The fantasy novelist, who has Alzheimer's, will call for a tribunal to be set up where people can apply for legal permission to end their lives at a time of their choosing.

Sir Terry's impassioned plea will come as he delivers the annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC1.

Extracts were released in advance yesterday as the BBC published a poll which it said showed 'a clear majority of Britons support allowing supported suicide for the terminally ill'.

The survey was taken for an edition of Panorama to be broadcast before Sir Terry's lecture.

It will feature an interview with Kay Gilderdale, who was last week acquitted of attempted murder after helping her daughter Lynn, who was paralysed by ME, to end her life.

The BBC says it is 'pure coincidence' that the two programmes are being shown on the same night.

But critics questioned if the corporation has an 'agenda' on the eve of publication of guidelines on assisted suicide from the Director of Public Prosecutions.

They are expected to effectively give the green light to relatives to help desperately ill loved ones to die.

Panorama will also feature Baroness Campbell, who has battled a degenerative illness for 50 years and is opposed to the introduction of assisted suicide.

But the anti-euthanasia group Care Not Killing said it had 'grave concerns' over the level of balance with which assisted suicide is portrayed. It also raised concerns over the presentation of the Panorama poll findings.

The poll showed that 73 per cent said friends or relatives should be allowed to help someone who is terminally ill to commit suicide.

But this fell to 48 per cent when the illness was incurable and painful, but not fatal - and 49 per cent said those involved in such cases should face prosecution.


_{Lynn Gilderdale: Paralysed by ME}

Care Not Killing director Dr Peter Saunders said the results of polling tend to be coloured when emotive cases have recently made news.

Sir Terry is the first novelist to deliver the Richard Dimbleby lecture in its 34-year history. Previous lecturers have included Prince Charles, Bill Clinton, Dame Stella Rimington and Dr Rowan Williams.

He will argue that 'assisted suicide' - or 'assisted death' as he prefers to call it - is 'an idea whose time is really coming'.

The author of the hugely successful Discworld books first made a plea for the right to take his own life last summer following the controversial House of Lords judgment in the case of Debbie Purdy.

The Law Lords ruled that the DPP must give Mrs Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis, guidance on whether her husband will face prosecution and a possible 14-year jail sentence if he helps her travel to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich to die.

In the lecture, Sir Terry will say his proposed tribunal would be acting for the good of society as well as that of the applicant. It would also 'ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the influence of a third party'.

'I would suggest there should be a lawyer - one with expertise in dynastic family affairs - and a medical practitioner experienced in dealing with the complexities of serious long-term illnesses.'

The tribunal would also offer protection to the medical profession and Sir Terry will suggest that many GPs would support the right to die if they were protected.

Summing up, he will say: 'We should aim for a good and rich life, well lived, and at the end of it, in the comfort of our own home in the company of those who love us, have a death worth dying for'.

But Dr Saunders said: 'To argue that if you are terminally ill you deserve less protection from the law than do the rest of us is highly discriminatory as well as dangerous.

'Many cases of abuse involving elderly, sick and disabled people occur in so-called loving families and the blanket prohibition of intentional killing or assisting suicide is there to ensure that vulnerable people are not put at risk.'

A BBC spokesman said: 'The Dimbleby lecture always features a prominent person talking about something they are particularly involved in. Across the BBC's output there is a wide opportunity for different points of view to be heard.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.u(...)d.html#ixzz0eGXNXkBB