It isn''t quite ''Don''t buy any green bananas''. But it''s close to ''Don''t start any long books''.

In his mid-40s, Simon Boas was diagnosed with incurable cancer - it had been caught too late, and spread around his body. But he was determined to die as he had learned to live - optimistically, thinking the best of people, and prioritising what really matters in life.

In A Beginner's Guide to Dying Simon considers and collates the things that have given him such a great sense of peace and contentment, and why dying at 46 really isn't so bad. And for that reason it's also only partly about 'dying'. It is mostly a hymn to the joy and preciousness of life, and why giving death a place can help all of us make even more of it.