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33 Meditations on Death
33 Meditations on Death
Apr 21, 2025 1:51 AM

Author:David Jarrett

33 Meditations on Death

AS FEATURED ON BBC RADIO 4 'Start the Week' : 'very moving - brilliant and profound'

"Brilliant - a grimly humorous yet humane account of the realities of growing old in the modern age."- Henry Marsh

"A remarkably likeable guide to a grisly subject ... daunting, yet ultimately life-affirming" - Independent

What is a good death?

How would you choose to live your last few months?

How do we best care for the rising tide of very elderly?

This unusual and important book is a series of reflections on death in all its forms: the science of it, the medicine, the tragedy and the comedy. Dr David Jarrett draws on family stories and case histories from his thirty years of treating the old, demented and frail to try to find his own understanding of the end.

Profound, provocative, strangely funny and astonishingly compelling, it is an impassioned plea that we start talking frankly and openly about death. He writes about all the conversations that we, our parents, our children, the medical community, our government and society as a whole should be having.

And it is a call to arms for us to make radical changes to our perspective on 'the seventh age of man'.

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More praise for 33 Meditations on Death:

"This book will stay with you." - Derren Brown

"Bursting with empathy, common sense and humour." - Professor Dame Sue Black

Reviews

Brilliant - a grimly humorous yet humane account of the realities of growing old in the modern age. Everybody over the age of 60 should read it and ponder their probable future.

—— Henry Marsh

It is striking how the candour of our public discourse fails when we get on to the subject of death, a significant and puzzling failure for it is the fate we all share. David Jarrett's 33 Meditations, the fruit of forty years of professional experience with people at the end of their lives, is not only timely and important, but hugely enjoyable. One of the most memorable books I've read recently.

—— The Revd Richard Coles

A remarkably likeable guide to a grisly subject ... daunting, yet ultimately life-affirming

—— Independent

Death doesn’t only touch the dying. This wonderfully enlightening book by a doctor who cares for the dying is a plea for all of us to consider now what a good death should look like and what we’d want for ourselves. Bursting with empathy, common sense and humour, would that we could all be so fortunate as to have the author at our bedside when the time comes.

—— Professor Dame Sue Black, author of All That Remains

Compelling reflections on the dignity of human life, and the emotional inevitability of its end.

—— Professor Stephen Westaby

Editors Choice - This life-affirming book takes a multi-faceted look at the end of life. Jarrett blends memoir with science, philosophy and the odd burst of magic as he reflects on death: the tragedy, the comedy and everything in between. It's a wonderfully humane manifesto for all the frank and open conversations that we, our parents, our children, the medical community, our government and society should be having.

—— Caroline Sanderson , The Bookseller

An extraordinary, unflinching rumination that brings us into a more companionable relationship with death, and in doing so helps us to live. There is a deceptive lightness to David's writing which keeps us in easy company, undoes much of its mystery, and helps us in that most vital adult project: to face our mortality. This book will stay with you.

—— Derren Brown

Dr Jarrett is addressing such an important topic and he deals with it in such an honest, pragmatic and yet compassionate way. He is telling it how it is day in day out on the acute medical wards in general hospitals throughout the country and he is right that we must persuade people to move away form the concept that length of life trumps quality of life.

—— Carl Brookes, Consultant Cardiologist and Physician

Playful and profound.

—— Guto Harri, writer, broadcaster and communications consultant

A vivid and compelling memoir of [Simard's] lifelong quest to prove that the forest is more than just a collection of trees

—— The New York Times

Extraordinary

—— BBC Wildlife Magazine

The moving and remarkable story of one of the greatest ecological discoveries of our time. Writing with humility and passion, Suzanne Simard's unravelling of the secret life of trees is changing the scientific mindset. Finding the Mother Tree is a crucial step towards healing our planet

—— Isabella Tree, author of Wilding and The Living Goddess

Few scientists make much impact with their PhD thesis, but, in 1997, Suzanne Simard did just that ... What was then a challenge to orthodox ideas is today widely accepted

—— New Scientist

Finding the Mother Tree is a rare and moving book - part charming memoir, part crash course in forest ecology. And yet, it manages to be about the things that matter most: the ways we care for each other, fail each other and listen to each other. After the last year and a half, its lessons about motherhood, connection and the natural world are more timely than ever

—— Jake Gyllenhaal

Few researchers have had the pop culture impact of Suzanne Simard

—— Scientific American

The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story... These are stories that the world needs to hear

—— Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

Suzanne Simard has a completely beguiling way of writing. I love how she combines brilliant scientific explanation with emotion and feeling

—— Patrick Barkham, author of Wild Child and The Butterfly Isles

Suzanne Simard is a total legend - someone who transformed the world in the way of James Lovelock, or Lynn Margulis

—— Rowan Hooper

Revolutionary on both the scientific and the spiritual level. It is so extraordinary that it is, frankly, hard to believe - until you see the data, the science, the rigour, and the many independent affirmations of her findings... Simard is one of [Nature's] most insightful and eloquent translators

—— John Vaillant, author of The Tiger

This book looks inside the heart of a profession, the life of a family, and the condition of being human. Beautiful, thoughtful and compelling

—— Kathryn Mannix, author of With the End in Mind

Absolutely beautiful writing, Christie Watson captures both the intense joy and searing heartbreak of love

—— Jo Swinson

A salute to the profession, the book is also a mediation on motherhood

—— Kate Womersley , Times Literary Supplement

An insightful reminder of exactly how vital it is to treat one another with kindness and compassion, at a time when we need it most

—— Woman's Own

A no-nonsense crib sheet on the state of the world and how to help it

—— The I Newspaper

If his book falls into the hands of the powerful then it could just save the planet. At the very least, it will provide some thought-provoking facts

—— The I Newspaper

Punchy and to the point. No beating around the bush. This brilliant book contains all the information we need to have in our back pocket in order to move forward

—— Christiana Figueres, author of The Future We Choose

Visceral and haunting...This novel's prose soars with its transporting descriptions of the planet's landscapes and their dwindling inhabitants, and contains many wonderful meditations on our responsibilities to our earthly housemates...The Last Migration is a nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over

—— The New York Times Book Review

Dreamy, elegiac... both an adventure story and a piece of speculative climate fiction, constantly slipping between a kind of literary realism and more magical elements, between moments of domestic drama and sweeping epic... an aching and poignant book, and one that's pressing in its timeliness... It's also a book about love, about trying to understand and accept the creatureliness that exists within our selves, and what it means to be a human animal, that we might better accommodate our own wildness within the world.

—— Fiona Wright , Guardian Australia

Gutting and gorgeous, The Last Migration is an astounding meditation on love, trauma, and the cost of survival. With soulful prose and deep empathy, Charlotte McConaghy weaves parallel stories of a woman and a world on the brink of devastation, but never without hope. Equal parts love letter and dirge, this is a true force of a book that I read holding my breath from its start to its symphonic finish

—— Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild

At a time when it feels like we're at the end of the world, this novel about a different kind of end of the world serves as both catharsis and escape

—— Harper's Bazaar US

This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairy-tale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend The Last Migration with my whole heart

—— Geraldine Brooks, Author of March

Powerful...Vibrant...Unique... If worry is the staple emotion that most climate fiction evokes in its readers, The Last Migration - the novelistic equivalent of an energizing cold plunge - flutters off into more expansive territory

—— Los Angeles Times

How far do we have to go to escape our pasts and find ourselves? Charlotte McConaghy’s luminous, brilliant novel, set in a future when wildlife is rapidly becoming extinct, is indeed about loss—but what makes it miraculous is that it is also about both the glimpses of hope and the shattering persistence of love, if we are only brave enough to acknowledge them. Written in prose as gorgeous as the crystalline beauty of the Arctic, The Last Migration is deeply moving, haunting, and, yes, important

—— Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You

A lovely, haunting novel about a troubled woman’s quest to follow the last surviving Arctic terns on their southerly migration. As she tries to make peace with the ghosts of her painful past, she must choose whether she herself wants – or deserves – to survive, in spite of everything she, and all humans, have destroyed and lost

—— Ceridwen Dovey, author of In the Garden of the Fugitives

This book is a powerful - and entertaining - corrective to the idea that the only hopes that matter on this planet are those of our own species.

—— Tim Adams , Guardian

Macdonald has a wonderful gift for exploring the intersection between nature and our experience of it, in writing that is both lyrical and impassioned.

—— Hannah Beckerman , Observer

One of the most beautiful memoirs I've ever read. This story will say with you long after you put the book down

—— Emma Gannon

I just turned the last page (reluctantly!). A bold, often brutal exploration of memory, grief and love. Full of hope and heart. I can't recommend it enough

—— Terri White, author of Coming Undone

A brave, brilliant book that is both beautiful and important. Read it then buy it for all your friends

—— Hello!

Gavanndra's memoir The Consequences of Love is absolutely beautiful. It's compelling, heartbreaking, sweet, honest, fascination. I recommend it HIGHLY. I absolutely LOVED it.

—— Marian Keyes

This stunning exploration of grief is so well written and profoundly moving

—— Good Housekeeping

An elegant study of grief and memory

—— Guardian

Hodge pours heartbreak and love into the pages of a book that never pretends to know the answers, and is all the better for it

—— Sunday Times

An eye-opening snapshot of the fashion world in '90s London

—— Vogue UK
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