The Welcome Visitor

Death is a subject modern society shies away from. Even doctors avoid the word. But if we regard death as a failure in our desire to prolong life, can we ever arrive at a humane approach to those whose lives have lost meaning? Are we keeping people alive simply because we can?

Here, John Humphrys and his co-author Dr Sarah Jarvis take a wider look at how our attitudes to death have changed as doctors have learned how to prolong life beyond anything that could have been imagined only a few generations ago, and confront one of the great challenges facing the western world today.

There are no easy answers but the first step must surely be to accept that death can be as welcome as it is inevitable.

“'Tremendously uplifting ...deserves the widest readership'”

This is an important book. It needs to be. Slowly, we are coming to realise that a life well lived might decently conclude with a death well and timely died. - Terry Pratchett

Compelling - Daily Mail

Comforting... Honest... It is a relief to have some of the private struggles of dealing with death brought out into the open. He is determined to tell it like it is. - Daily Telegraph

Impassioned and impressive - Sunday Times

Tremendously uplifting ...deserves the widest readership - News Talk

a powerful, compassionate book, movingly illustrated - FT on Sunday

illuminating and helpful - The Times

John Humphrys has reported from all over the world for the BBC and presented its frontline news programmes on both radio and television, in a broadcasting career spanning forty years. He has won a string of awards and been described as a 'national treasure'. He owned a dairy farm for ten years and has homes in Wales, Greece and London.

Dr Sarah Jarvis is a GP in London as well as making regular media appearances in The One Show and with her own column in Good Housekeeping magazine.

Death is a subject modern society shies away from. Even doctors avoid the word. But if we regard death as a failure in our desire to prolong life, can we ever arrive at a humane approach to those whose lives have lost meaning? Are we keeping people alive simply because we can?Here, John Humphrys and his co-author Dr Sarah Jarvis take a wider look at how our attitudes to death have changed as doctors have learned how to prolong life beyond anything that could have been imagined only a few generations ago, and confront one of the great challenges facing the western world today.There are no easy answers but the first step must surely be to accept that death can be as welcome as it is inevitable.

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