Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography

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Now, the book Terry sadly couldn’t finish has been written by Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the Pratchett literary estate. Drawing on his own extensive memories, along with those of the author’s family, friends and colleagues, Rob unveils the full picture of Terry’s life - from childhood to his astonishing writing career, and how he met and coped with what he called the ‘Embuggerance’ of Alzheimer’s disease.

Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official

Look after Lyn, please. Have those fine pieces of jewellery cast to my design and give them with my love. Choose a gift every Christmas and birthday. Send flowers. Have a big dinner each year, more if necessary or if a celebration is required, and raise a brandy to my memory and to happy days. And Wilkins clearly loved him, having been not just an employee but a friend and eventually, with the “embuggerance”, also often a caretaker. And yet his view of Terry is not that of starry-eyed admiration but a realistic one, with the down-to-earth admiration and sometimes tolerance and at times friendly exasperation. It’s both heartbreaking and funny, bittersweet and joyful — all at the same time. He doesn’t sugarcoat Terry at his highs or his lows, and that conveys the feeling of seeing a closeup of a real, complex person. Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's disease, the mantle of completing Terry's memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author's literary estate.

Explore the world of Terry Pratchett

As much as this is about Terry Pratchett it was fascinating to get a glimpse of what it was like to see him work, travel and negotiate fiercely for his art. The man was a perfectionist and reading all this from Rob's perspective made the book even more special.

Terry Pratchett to be published Official biography of Terry Pratchett to be published

Sir Terry is the famous author of the Discworld series (and more). In December 2007, he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's of all things. It seems especially ironic and tragic that he had this particular illness what with him being a writer, his calling being bringing to life strange worlds and people, living in his own head so to speak - when it is his mind that was to fail him before his body would. Next, I learned that, “Terry used to describe himself as ‘horizontally wealthy,” meaning that money hadn’t changed the person that he was, he could just afford to buy more things. However, he made some interesting choices, “instead of a Delorean DMC-12, Terry bought a shepherd’s hut,” which is “where [he] had the idea for the character of Tiffany Aching.” I got the audio version of the book partly because I knew I'd never be able to get through it without crying (and it's hard to read with tears all over your tablet) but also because it was read (very beautifully) by the author, Rob Wilkins (Terry's personal assistant). Heart breaking and funny . . . sometimes joyfully, sometimes painfully, intimate . . . it is wonderful to have this closeup picture of the writer's working life. Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Observer Terry often talked about “doing” his autobiography. In the years before he was ill, he talked about it almost exclusively to dismiss the idea. He didn’t seem persuaded that there was anything in the story of the journey that took a kid from a council house in Beaconsfield to a knighthood and a mansion near Salisbury by the sheer power of his imagination alone; or in the tale of how a boy with, as Terry put it, “a mouthful of speech impediments” became one of his generation’s most popular communicators; or how someone who left school with five O-levels could also go on to have an honorary professorship at Trinity College Dublin. And besides, there were always other things waiting to be written – bigger stories in which far more outlandish and arresting things were free to happen.Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. To continue shopping, enter the characters as they are shown This Forbidden Planet special edition hardcover comes with orange sprayed edges, and is signed by author Rob Wilkins.