David Jarrett has been a doctor for forty years, thirty of which as an NHS consultant in geriatric and stroke medicine. He is a clinician, teacher, examiner and former medical manager with extensive experience of frailty, death and dying and the modern world's failure to confront the realities. He has also worked in Canada, India, Africa and the USSR. He is married with two children and lives in Hampshire during the week, and in London at weekends.
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