Romain’s opting for benign generalisations and loose language over Stock’s sometimes ruthless linguistic precision is an important factor in these debates.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain (a former chair of Dignity in Dying) and philosopher Professor Kathleen Stock have opposing views. Stock opens with “a basic and incontrovertible truth” that “We are all going to die”. Esther Rantzen’s Preface to Romain’s book opens with “For most of my life, I thought I was immortal”. These set the tone for what follows, in Stock’s careful philosophical analysis and forensic scrutiny of evidence, and Romain’s optimistic polemic. Romain exemplifies those who, in Stock’s words, invest in utopian scenarios by “leaving out huge chunks of real-world information – then contemplating how smoothly assisted death services would work in that imaginary context”.

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