This image is the cover for the book Until Further Notice, I Am Alive

Until Further Notice, I Am Alive

“These are thoughts for us all, sooner or later—and this is a book I'll keep with me, as long as I live.”—David Sexton, The Scotsman

In 2008, art critic Tom Lubbock was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor and told he had only two years to live. Physically fit and healthy, and suffering from few symptoms, he faced his death with the same directness and courage that had marked the rest of his life. Lubbock was renowned for the clarity and unconventionality of his writing, and his characteristic fierce intelligence permeates this extraordinary chronicle. With unflinching honesty and curiosity, he repeatedly turns over the fact of his mortality, as he wrestles with the paradoxical question of how to live, knowing we’re going to die.

Defying the initial diagnosis, Tom survived for three years. He savored his remaining days; engaging with books, art, friends, his wife and their young son, while trying to stay focused on the fact of his impending death. There are medical details—he vividly describes the slow process of losing control over speech as the tumor gradually pressed down on the area of his brain responsible for language—but this is much more than a book about illness; rather, it's a book about a man who remains in thrall to life, as he inches closer to death.

“I hope that if I am ever diagnosed with a terminal illness I will remember to reread Until Further Notice, I Am Alive.  It is, in its tough-minded way, truly joyous.”—Lynn Barber, Sunday Times

Tom Lubbock, Marion Coutts

Tom Lubbock, writer and illustrator, was the chief art critic of the Independent between 1997 and 2011. In 2008 he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Until Further Notice, I Am Alive is his memoir chronicling the years that followed. Tom Lubbock died in 2011. Great Works, his collection of essays on painting, was published in October 2011.

Granta Books