Dan Hitchens

3 weeks ago | spectator.co.uk | Dan Hitchens

The hospice movement is one of the great achievements of post-war Britain. Inspired by the doctor Cicely Saunders, who in effect founded the field of palliative care, it has united cutting-edge research with a profound understanding of suffering and how to relieve it. Britain’s hundreds of hospices are Saunders’s legacy. But can that legacy survive an assisted suicide law?

3 weeks ago | spectator.com.au | Dan Hitchens

The hospice movement is one of the great achievements of post-war Britain. Inspired by the doctor Cicely Saunders, who in effect founded the field of palliative care, it has united cutting-edge research with a profound understanding of suffering and how to relieve it. Britain’s hundreds of hospices are Saunders’s legacy.

1 month ago | spectator.com.au | Dan Hitchens

How do you make assisted suicide safe? In recent months, a large part of Kim Leadbeater’s answer has been to point to the involvement of psychiatrists. Having a psychiatrist sign off each death, Leadbeater said, would ‘add expertise’. They would be part of a much-touted ‘multidisciplinary’ approach. In particular, they would be able to check that applicants met the threshold of the Mental Capacity Act.

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Dan Hitchens

How do you make assisted suicide safe? In recent months, a large part of Kim Leadbeater’s answer has been to point to the involvement of psychiatrists. Having a psychiatrist sign off each death, Leadbeater said, would ‘add expertise’. They would be part of a much-touted ‘multidisciplinary’ approach. In particular, they would be able to check that applicants met the threshold of the Mental Capacity Act. There’s just one problem.

1 month ago | compactmag.com | Dan Hitchens

Do something on Samuel Johnson, the editor urges me. Nothing political. Not “What would Samuel Johnson think of the method of tariff calculation.” Just a purely literary essay on this mighty figure of our civilization. At this, my mind goes temporarily blank, and when it restarts a figure comes into view. He is tall, big and clumsy, compulsively twitching and muttering (Tourette’s, some have diagnosed him with), wearing an 18th-century wig singed from holding a candle too close while reading.