The actor argues that the law has changed elsewhere; now it’s time for the UK to show compassion

I’ve been campaigning and raising money for assisted dying for decades, but now we have an icon like Esther Rantzen talking about it, suddenly the game has changed. My mother died in 1964 and some time after that I decided to join the Euthanasia Society, which is now called Dignity in Dying. When I looked after my mother-in-law, she was begging to get off the planet but nobody would help her. After that there was my husband Eddie [Kulukundis, theatre and sports philanthropist] who had dementia. He was such a gentle man, a pleasure to look after for 14 years. But 18 months before he met his maker, he said in an aggressive way, which was quite unusual for Eddie, “I just want to die.”

I cared for my two sisters, both of whom lived well until they were 94. But the last five weeks of my sister Anne’s life was horrendous because of how much agony she was in. Every few minutes she was saying, “Please help me. Why can’t they help me to go now? I’m not going to get any better. I have no future. I will never move again. Please.”

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PM says ‘I’m not against it in principle’ with issue expected to be subject of Commons vote in next parliament

Rishi Sunak has said he is not opposed to assisted dying in principle ahead of an expected vote on the issue in the next parliament.

Speaking to journalists in Puglia, the prime minister said he was not against changing the law on euthanasia.

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Challenge accuses Alex Chalk of failure to raise rates, reducing access in immigration and asylum cases

The lord chancellor is being taken to the high court over claims that legal aid fees are so low they are preventing lawyers from providing representation for thousands of people who are eligible for it.

The challenge focuses on access to legal aid for immigration and asylum lawyers. It is being brought by Duncan Lewis solicitors, one of the largest providers of civil legal aid in this area.

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Her mother was furious at having no control over the end of her life. Now the actor is channelling that anger into getting the law changed

It was during the process of my mother [actor Diana Rigg] dying of terminal lung cancer that her frustrations of having no agency became clear. My husband, Guy [Garvey], had recorded tapes of his father speaking before he died and it felt like the natural thing to do with Mama. She and Guy talked about life, love and her career. Then there were recordings about the right to die. At this stage she was in the hospital, when it was the end. By this point she was an angry woman.

When the grief of her death had subsided enough that I was able to listen to the recordings, I realised I had an urgent mission. I owed her this. To share her statements on assisted dying. Ma had seen buddies go slowly and had nursed my dad’s mum and had always said, “Will you pull the plug if it gets too bad? Put the pillow over my face?” When it came down to it, I had to say to her, “I’ll do everything in my power but I’ve got a three-year-old son. I can’t go to the clink because I’m suffocating my mother. I’ll do anything and everything. But not that.” Dignitas would have been an option but was not possible as it was Covid and a bureaucratic nightmare.

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With missing defendants, dodgy video links and crumbling walls, a typical day at Snaresbrook show why 68,125 cases are waiting to be heard in England and Wales

In one of Britain’s busiest courts, a judge is taking the rare step of apologising to a defendant. “I’m so sorry, people should not be waiting over two years to be tried,” he says, addressing the man directly from the bench. “You have my personal apology, please stay in contact with your lawyers.”

The court has just been told that October 2026 is the earliest possible date the case can be heard. “It’s awful,” the judge remarks after confirming the situation with officials. “Who says our system isn’t broken?”

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Seeing his brother’s distressing deterioration has made the broadcaster even more certain that legal reform is needed

My brother was a sculptor. A vibrant, formidable force. Physically strong and intellectually clear-minded, with a wonderful capacity to express his love of art. The autumn before he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, my wife noticed he looked a bit frail. He had trouble swallowing his food. He had just completed a sculpture of Coleridge for a churchyard in Devon and was otherwise fit and well. But then he fell over, on to a child while in London. Nick had been mortified, so he visited the GP. In February 2023 I received the call: “Joth, I’ve got some bad news.”

The diagnosis came brutally. It horrified Nick to adjust to a life in which he would not be able to use his hands or voice. “I’m not going to allow myself to be a trussed-up chicken carcass,” he said. “I’m going to bring an end to it before that.”

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We should be able to die at home, and before we lose our minds to dementia, the writer argues

When the distinguished Belgian writer Hugo Claus was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he emailed his friends to say that when the disease had advanced to the point that he would be soon unable to make decisions, he would end his life. Accordingly, in March 2008, he died at a legal Belgian facility. The Catholic church naturally condemned his action. Whereas the former prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, not always a man for the striking phrase, said that the onset of Alzheimer’s must have been “an inevitable and unbearable torture”, and went on: “I can live with the fact that he decided thus, because he left us as a great glowing star, right on time, just before he collapsed into a stellar black hole.” Claus’s actions struck me, and still do, as rational, exemplary, and in a quiet way, heroic.

The religious generally argue that God has given us life, and so it is not ours to dispose of as and when we see fit. The non-religious, who guess that we have arrived by some piece of cosmic chance, are more inclined to think that as autonomous beings, it is our right and duty to live according to our own lights and, in extreme circumstances, to control the manner of our own death. With increasing longevity, plus medical advances that keep us alive well beyond the point where in previous centuries we would have died, complex problems arise for individuals, doctors and society at large.

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Seat of Labour’s Stella Creasy among those challenged by activists running as independents in the general election

Anti-abortion campaigners are running as independent candidates in the general election against prominent MPs seeking re-election who supported decriminalisation.

The seats of Labour’s Diana Johnson and Stella Creasy and Conservative Caroline Nokes are all being targeted by anti-abortion activists. The three proposed or supported recent amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill which would have stopped prosecutions for anyone ending a pregnancy in England and Wales.

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Remembering the deaths of her first husband and brother, the broadcaster calls for urgent change

Many people have a vision that they’re going to die a good death because they’ve seen it on telly. A patient lies in bed, with their nearest and dearest. Holding hands. Mozart playing, before they drift into a deep sleep.

Death, for most, is not like that at all. My first husband had a horrible death. He didn’t want to die because he thought he should live for my sake and the children. But he had emphysema. Sometimes he would not be able to breathe and doctors would have to get him on a trolley to get to the right equipment. It was incredibly upsetting. We’d run down the corridor and he’d try to grab my hand. Once he put my thumb in his mouth and sucked it like a child with a dummy. Doctors shoved me out of the way and took him to a defibrillator. The next day I went back to the hospital and he was fine. I thought, how many times will we have to go through this?

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