First up a big credit to Rob Wilkins, who worked as Pratchett's PA for around 20 years and now works with the renowned author's daughter to help manage Pratchett's estate. It's actually quite touching seeing Wilkins' personal journey with Pratchett as it adds the perfect sort of lens for a biography. It's odd, usually a biography is either too weirdly self-centred if written by the person, and too distant by others, but this book strikes a balance. Nejsem zbožňujícím fanouškem Terryho knih, nejsem ani občasným fanouškem Terryho knih. Sama sobě si neustále vemlouvám to, že jsem ho chytila za špatný konec. Naštěstí nejsem jediná, kdo se k tomuto názoru přiklání. Po Životě v poznámkách pod čarou si troufám tvrdit, že jsem zbožňující fanynkou obrovského srdcaře, který dýchal pro fantastiku do posledního dechu … At six years old, our friend and favourite writer of books Terry Pratchett was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything. He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At sixty-six, Terry had lived a life full of achievements: becoming one of the UK’s bestselling writers, winning the Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Rhianna, Terry and Lyn Pratchett, dressed for a stage adaptation of Maskerade in 1995. Photograph: Penguin

This biography was written by someone who knew him personally, and I must say it was by far the best biography I've ever read. Drawing on his own extensive memories, along with those of Terry’s family, friends, fans and colleagues, Rob recounts Terry’s extraordinary story – from his early childhood to the literary phenomenon that his Discworld series became; and how he met and coped with the challenges that ‘The Embuggerance’ of Alzheimer’s brought with it. Talking of humanity, I loved reading that his wife “Lyn’s strongest and most abiding first impression of Terry was of his kindness.”

Where is the option to give this book 10 out of 5? Because, damn, it can't be overstated how good this book is. It is therefore no surprise that it was around that time (December 2007) when the idea of writing an autobiography actually took shape (he had always dismissed it before). Sir Terry even started jutting down quite a bit from which Rob Wilkins was taking cues here and there for this book. Drawing on his own extensive memories, along with those of Terry's family, friends, fans and colleagues, Rob recounts Terry's extraordinary story - from his early childhood to the literary phenomenon that his Discworld series became; and how he met and coped with the challenges that 'The Embuggerance' of Alzheimer's brought with it. Pratchett fans will no doubt be thrilled to learn more about his early days as a journalist and his groundbreaking work in the world of comic fantasy, as well as his later struggles with Alzheimer's disease and his tireless advocacy for assisted dying. But even readers who are less familiar with Pratchett's oeuvre will find much to appreciate in this book, which offers a touching and nuanced portrait of a man who made a profound impact on the world around him. The final chapters of the book and of Pratchett's life are incredibly sad. Dementia is a cruel disease that chips away at a person until a mere shell is left. It's distressing and fear producing for the patient and painful and worrying for their family and friends. This, for me, was the primary message to pay attention to in this volume.

Wilkins never says so, but one comes away with the impression that Sir Terry Pratchett was deeply hurt by critical disdain. One remark – that the critic would be “surprised if any women wanted to read these” – stands out for its inaccuracy: Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour was the first to serialise two of his early Discworld novels, The Colour of Magic and Equal Rites. 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.Before his death, Terry was working on an autobiography, which was never completed—but contrary to the hard-drive containing all of his unpublished fiction, which, in accordance with his final wishes, was ritually destroyed by a steamroller, Rob took it upon himself to finish what Terry had started. He draws largely from Terry’s unfinished manuscript, but also from the stories of friends, family, and former colleagues… and if you thought that it wouldn’t be all that interesting until Terry becomes the beloved, bestselling author we all think of him as, then you would be very wrong. He lived a life filled with astonishing achievements in a variety of jobs, and had some peculiar hobbies and interests, ranging from electrical engineering, to beekeeping, gaming, rescuing tortoises, gardening, and casting insects in gold and silver. Always one with an inquisitive mind and easily kindled curiosity, Terry insisted on forging his own sword after being knighted for services to literature. It’s all illuminating, and I appreciated that Rob didn’t try to sugarcoat or hide Terry’s more disagreeable personality traits, such as his irascibility and ingratitude, but there were also many sweet, and even more funny passages. The book turns truly exceptional in the solemn final third though—right around when Terry starts exhibiting some worrying symptoms, which culminated in an earth-shattering diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a rare, visual variant of Alzheimer’s disease. Why is he so underestimated? The world he created was brilliantly absurd – elephants all the way down – and strangely convincing. I remember arriving by car in Palermo, in Sicily, one day and one of my children saying “we’re on holiday in Ankh-Morpork”. Unlike any other fantasy world, Discworld constantly responds to our own. You’ve only got to look at the titles of the books ( Reaper Man, The Fifth Elephant) – parodies of films. Discworld is the laboratory where Pratchett carried out thought experiments on everything from social class and transport policy to the nature of time and death. Discworld, like Middle-earth, is immersive in a way that tempts people to dress up, draw street maps, tabulate its rules and pretend they live there His wit, indeed sparkling as it was, and his intelligence was plain to see from what he had written, up until the very (rather bitter) end. The only reason I read this book was because it was about PTerry and it only felt right that I should. Similar qualms on Terry’s part affected the price paid up front for Good Omens, his 1990 collaboration with Neil Gaiman. During 1985, Neil had shown Terry a file containing 5,282 words exploring a scenario in which Richmal Crompton’s William Brown had somehow become the Antichrist. Terry loved it, and the concept stayed in his mind. A couple of years later, he rang Neil to ask him if he had done any more work on it. Neil, who had been spending that time thinking about his series The Sandman, for DC Comics, said he hadn’t really given it another thought. Terry said: “Well, I know what happens next, so either you can sell me the idea or we can write it together.” Neil knew straight away which of those options he preferred. As he said: “It was like Michelangelo ringing up and saying, ‘Do you fancy doing a ceiling?’”