Introduction

Stephen Sackur speaks to the palliative care doctor and author Rachel Clarke. She has written thought-provoking, moving accounts of what it's like to be a junior doctor, and how it felt to confront the Covid pandemic. But perhaps her most powerful book focuses on a subject that many doctors, and the public, find it difficult to discuss: Death. In Dear Life, she weaves together the personal story of a daughter facing the terminal cancer illness of her beloved father with that of a doctor who made a deliberate choice to focus her care on the dying. In the process of dying, which will of course be the fate of every one of us, Rachel Clarke finds life lessons which we would all do well to learn. She asks us to consider a tough question: can dying be life affirming?