Terry Pratchett backs right-to-die campaign

The best-selling novelist Sir Terry Pratchett, diagnosed two years ago with Alzheimer's, has added his weight to the right-to-die debate - he does not like the term "assisted suicide" - saying that, when the times comes, he hopes to be "helped across the step".

"I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod," he wrote in the Mail on Sunday. He chose the 16th century choral music composer because "Thomas's music could lift even an atheist a little bit closer to Heaven".

Pratchett was reacting to the law lords' ruling last week on the case brought by Debbie Purdy, a victim of multiple sclerosis who is confined to a wheelchair. She wanted to know where her husband would stand legally if he accompanied her to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland where she would like one day to end her life. The law lords ruled that the Director of Public Prosecutions should indeed issue clear guidelines.

Pratchett, author of the popular Discworld novels, said he was writing his article as someone who had, regrettably, become famous for having Alzheimer's. "Although being famous is all the rage these days, it's fame I could do without," he wrote. "I know enough to realise there will not be a cure within my lifetime and I know the later stages of the disease can be very unpleasant."

As for the worry that some old people might be "urged" into taking an early death by greedy relatives, Pratchett said: "If we cannot come up with a means of identifying this, I would be very surprised."

He suggested that "some kind of gentle tribunal" might be the best way to make certain that requests for assisted death were bona fide. "In any case, in my experience it is pretty impossible to get an elderly person to do something they do not wish to do. They tend to know their own mind like the back of their hand, and quite probably would object to this being questioned."

A recent Populus poll showed that more than three-quarters of respondents were in favour of the right to suicide for the terminally ill. Pratchett concluded: "From personal experience, I believe the recent poll reflects the views of the people in this country. They don't dread death; it's what happens beforehand that worries them."

Terry Pratchett's article in full

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