Every Third Thought

AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK'Thoughtful, subtle, elegantly clever and oddly joyous, Every Third Thought is beautiful' Kate Mosse In 1995, at the age of forty two, Robert McCrum suffered a dramatic and near-fatal stroke, the subject of his acclaimed memoir My Year Off. Ever since that life-changing event, McCrum has lived in the shadow of death, unavoidably aware of his own mortality. And now, twenty-one years on, he is noticing a change: his friends are joining him there. Death has become his contemporaries’ every third thought. The question is no longer ‘who am I?’ but ‘how long have I got?’ and ‘what happens next?’With the words of McCrum’s favourite authors as travel companions, Every Third Thought, takes us on a journey through a year and towards death itself. As he acknowledges his own and his friends’ ageing, McCrum confronts an existential question: in a world where we have learnt to live well at all costs, can we make peace with what Freud calls 'the necessity of dying'? Searching for answers leads him to others for advice and wisdom, and Every Third Thought is populated by the voices of brain surgeons, psychologists, cancer patients, hospice workers, writers and poets.Witty, lucid and provocative, Every Third Thought is an enthralling exploration of what it means to approach the ‘end game’, and begin to recognize, perhaps reluctantly, that we are not immortal. Deeply personal and yet always universal, this is a book for anyone who finds themselves preoccupied by matters of life and death. It is both guide and companion.

Thoughtful, subtle, elegantly clever and oddly joyous, Every Third Thought is beautiful and - most of all - true, Every Third Thought is an important book, and one that brings death into the light, uncovering both the losses we have to endure, as well as the gifts we can receive if we are open to it. Profoundly moving and fascinating. It is a gem., As an assemblage of great quotes and prompts for further reading, Every Third Thought rivals DJ Enright's anthology The Oxford Book of Death. McCrum adds striking metaphors of his own., A wry and reflective treatise on mortality . . . fascinating and paradoxically enjoyable, We have to think about death, and talk about it, perhaps rather more than we do. And if that’s so, there can be no better guide than a wise, humane and battered-about writer like McCrum. He has thought deeply, talked widely, read voraciously and experienced much . . . by the time I had finished this book, I had a silly grin on my face. That was partly because it ends with a happy surprise, but more importantly because you cannot confront the meaning of death without a refreshed and more vivid understanding of the glory of being alive . . . As I closed it, having stared pretty steadily at extinction, I found myself encouraged and fortified. So, really, thank you, Robert.

Robert McCrum was born and educated in Cambridge. For nearly 20 years he was editor-in-chief of the publishers Faber & Faber, and then literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2008. He is now an associate editor of the Observer. He is the author of My Year Off, Wodehouse: A Life (2004), six novels, and the co-author of the international bestseller, The Story of English (1986).