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Terry Pratchett dead: Remember the Discworld author with this moving right to die video

The author, who died on Thursday at the age of 66 and lived for eight years with Alzheimer's, was a passionate advocate of assisted death

Helen Nianias
Thursday 12 March 2015 13:35 EDT
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2012 Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction winner Terry Pratchett with his pig who was named after his novel Snuff
2012 Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction winner Terry Pratchett with his pig who was named after his novel Snuff (Jeff Morgan )

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Terry Pratchett, who has died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's, will be best remembered for his Discworld fantasy series, and his passionate support of the right to die.

In this lecture, Pratchett gets Tony Robinson to read much of his speech, which is a set of musings and jokes about death.

The aim of the speech, he said, was to "to bring the monster down". That monster was, of course, Alzheimer's - or posterior cortical atrophy. PCA is a form of the disease that severely effect's the sufferer's cognitive ability.

"Alzheimer's has been hidden in darkness," he said. "I wanted there to be a termination and a reckoning."

Sir Terry, you will be very much missed.

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