Tom Lubbock

Until Further Notice, I am Alive

In 2008, Tom Lubbock was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and told he had only one or two years to live. In this remarkable record of those years, lived out in three-month intervals between scans, he examines the question of how to live with death in sight.

 

As the tumour progressed, Tom engaged intensely and imaginatively with work, art, friends, and his wife and their young son, while trying to remain focused on the fact of his impending death. His tumour was located in the area of the brain associated with language, and he describes losing control over the spoken and written word and the resources he drew on to keep communicating; a struggle which brought him ever closer to the mysteries of the origin of speech. As the Independent's chief art critic, he was renowned for the clarity and unconventionality of his writing, and the same fierce intelligence permeates this extraordinary memoir. This is a book written by a man wholly engaged with life even as it ends.

 

'Until Further Notice, I Am Alive is an account of what William Empson called 'the human practice of dying'. And nothing in Lubbock's writing indicates that he did it with any less of the humour and intellectual curiosity that the lived by ... The details are beautifully observed; the big picture is illuminated; the title is well chosen’ - Alexander Linklater, Observer

 

Reviews

Evening Standard

Daily Telegraph

The Independent

The Observer

The Guardian

 

The Independent: extract and introduction by Marion Coutts

Granta: New from Granta books

 

 

Visit Journalisted to read much of Tom's work.

 

 

Tom Lubbock (1958-2011) was the chief art critic of The Independent, an illustrator and a writer. He studied philosophy at Cambridge University, before moving to London where he worked for the BBC, The Observer, and The Independent. Until Further Notice, I am Alive is his memoir of life post diagnosis. Tom Lubbock died in January 2011.

 

• The Independent obit here
• The Guardian obit here

 

The Observer extract here

 

October 2011

'Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored' published by Frances Lincoln.
Available from The Guardian Bookshop here.

 

April 2012
'Until Further Notice, I am Alive' published by Granta.

Available on Amazon here.