The coronavirus pandemic has made society’s relationship with death and dying everybody’s business. We have had to confront new challenges around the way we care for dying people, yet the old problems have not gone away.
In February 2018, Dennis Eccleston, suffering in agony from terminal cancer, took an overdose of pain medication to end his own life, helped by his wife Mavis. Mavis was charged with murder. The turmoil that followed sheds light on the brutal impact of the UK’s failure to legalise assisted dying.
Sarah Wootton and Lloyd Riley of the campaign group Dignity in Dying argue that our laws and culture governing death and dying need radical reform and present a vision of what dying in the twenty-first century should look like.
From votes for women to equal marriage, campaigners have had to fight for rights that now seem sacrosanct. As the pandemic now forces us to re-examine how we die, Wootton and Riley show how choice at the end of life is a right whose time has come.
Bringing to light the heart-breaking testimony of those who have witnessed unimaginable suffering at the end of life and exposing the hypocrisy of the arguments put forward to oppose progress, Last Rights questions how future generations will judge us if we fail to take action and issues a call to arms for people to unlock their power and demand change.

Lloyd Riley joined the Policy and Research team at Dignity in Dying and Compassion in Dying in 2014. He is committed to giving a voice to the dying people and bereaved relatives who have been and continue to be failed by the current law.
Drawing on his experience in the hospice sector and study of assisted dying laws around the world, Riley believes widespread change is needed to establish a culture around death and dying in the UK that truly respects the wishes of the individual.