Sir Terry Pratchett, the bestselling British fantasy writer, has died aged 66 after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Sir Terry was best known for his series of 40 Discworld fantasy novels whose quirky humour and deceptively sophisticated homespun wisdom have entertained readers since 1983.
His death was announced by his publisher in three tweets on Sir Terry’s own Twitter account, with an ironic flourish that would have sat well in one of the author’s own books.
“AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER,” reads the first tweet, which is presented as the words of Death.
Death features as an imposing, skeletal character carrying a scythe in most of the Discworld novels, and always speaks in capital letters.
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The tweets continue: “Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.”
The words are a loose quotation from Sir Terry’s 36th Discworld novel, Making Money.
The third and final tweet reads simply: “The End.”
He was ruefully candid about his diagnosis in 2007 with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease that causes the back of the brain to shrivel, telling a radio interview that the news was an “embuggerance”.
He became a pioneer in debunking the myths and fear about the disease, making a two-part documentary for the BBC in 2009 about living with dementia.
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The same year he was knighted for services to literature.
Sir Terry campaigned for better funding for research into brain degenerative diseases, after being shocked to discover that Alzheimer’s research attracted just three per cent of the funding that went into searching for a cure for cancer. He became the patron of Alzheimer’s Research UK.
He was chosen to give the Richard Dimbleby lecture in 2010, and titled his speech Shaking Hands with Death. The speech was read aloud by his friend, the Blackadder actor Tony Robinson, because one of the symptoms of his disease was difficulty in reading.
Sir Terry said that if his condition deteriorated he would choose to end his own life through assisted suicide.
In 2011 he made a pioneering documentary in which he followed a man with motor neurone disease to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland and watched him take a lethal dose of barbiturates.
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In the end, his publisher Penguin Random House said he “passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed, surrounded by his family”.
Larry Finlay, his publisher, said: ‘I was deeply saddened to learn that Sir Terry Pratchett has died. The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds.
“In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him. As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirise this world: he did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention.
“Terry faced his Alzheimer’s disease – an ‘embuggerance’, as he called it – publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.
“My sympathies go out to Terry’s wife Lyn, their daughter Rhianna, to his close friend Rob Wilkins, and to all closest to him.”
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Mr Finlay added: “He battled the progressive disease with his trademark determination and creativity, and continued to write.
“He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease.”
Sir Terry’s hobbies included astronomy, collecting carnivorous plants and playing video games. He collaborated in the creation of a number of game adaptations of his books.
One of the conceits of the Discworld is that the earth is flat, born up by four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle that swims through space. In 1995 palaeontologists named a fossil sea-turtle from the Eocene epoch of New Zealand Psephophorus terrypratchetti in the author’s honour.
News of his death provoked an outpouring by his dismayed fans on social media.
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“Goodbye Sir Terry. I’m a grown man moved to tears by your passing. I can’t be the only one. I / we all loved your books,” wrote one, echoing the views of many.
Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said: “Sir Terry was fond of saying ‘It’s time we learned to be as good at dying as we are at living’ and his brave approach to confronting issues of death, including his own, was a heartfelt demonstration of dignity.”