Channel 4 News Menu
12 Mar 2015

Terry Pratchett dies aged 66 after Alzheimer’s battle

Author Sir Terry Pratchett dies aged 66. The author announced in 2007 that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Terry Prachett announced in 2007 that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s. He is most famous for his series Discworld, the first novel of which was released in 1983.

As one of the UK’s best known novelists, he has sold over 85 million books worldwide. He was awarded an OBE in 1998 and knighted in 2009.

It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it Terry Pratchett

A statement on Sir Terry’s Facebook page said: “It is with immeasurable sadness that we announce that author Sir Terry Pratchett has died. The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds. Rest in peace Sir Terry Pratchett.”

‘Writing sustained him’

His publisher said Sir Terry had died with his family around him.

Larry Finlay, managing director at Transworld Publishers, said: “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 satirize 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,” he added.

“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.”

Above: Terry Pratchett speaks to Jon Snow in December 2013

He added that despite the diagnosis, Pratchett 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.

A post on his official Twitter page said simply “The End”.

Towards the end of his life, Pratchett had used his fame and wealth to campaign for a greater awareness of dementia and assisted dying.

In 2011, he featured in a documentary about suicide. He followed a man with motor neurone disease to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to see him take a lethal dose of barbiturates.

Sir Terry’s coat of arms echoed his activism on the right to die, bearing the refrain “Don’t fear the reaper”.

Asked why he wanted to make the film, he said it was because he was “appalled” at the state of the law.

A year earlier, he had used the prestigious Richard Dimbleby Lecture to call for assisted suicide to be legalised.

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said Pratchett was fond of saying “It’s time we learned to be as good at dying as we are at living”.

“His brave approach to confronting issues of death, including his own, was a heartfelt demonstration of dignity,” she added.

Alzheimer’s Society chief executive Jeremy Hughes said Sir Terry had “fundamentally changed the way dementia is seen and understood” and that he was “the most passionate of campaigners to bring change” who was determined to reduce the stigma of dementia.

Thinking of how he would remember Sir Terry, he said: “Shouting from the rooftops about the absurdity of how little funding dementia research receives, and fighting for good quality dementia care, he was and will remain the truest of champions for people with the condition.”