The joy of this biography . . . is that it spins magic from mundanity in precisely the way Pratchett himself did. The Telegraph Why is he so underestimated? The world he created was brilliantly absurd – elephants all the way down – and strangely convincing. I remember arriving by car in Palermo, in Sicily, one day and one of my children saying “we’re on holiday in Ankh-Morpork”. Unlike any other fantasy world, Discworld constantly responds to our own. You’ve only got to look at the titles of the books ( Reaper Man, The Fifth Elephant) – parodies of films. Discworld is the laboratory where Pratchett carried out thought experiments on everything from social class and transport policy to the nature of time and death. Discworld, like Middle-earth, is immersive in a way that tempts people to dress up, draw street maps, tabulate its rules and pretend they live there Aged nine or 10, his daughter Rhianna drew a picture of a hat and wrote underneath it: “I love my father but he is very busy.”

A truly wonderful and heartbreaking tale, filled with memories typed by Pratchett himself and lovingly woven with those of writer and ‘best PA in the world’ (read the book), Rob Wilkins. The unique humour and storytelling that carries you along in all of the adventure’s in Prattchett’s fiction is present throughout this biography which is filled with characters and situations as colourful and as rich as those from his books, making this a really enjoyable read.

And yes, it's the signed edition of a limited number. It also received special binding and the following additions: a postcard with a TP doodle and one of the most famous quote from the Discworld series, a doodle by Rob Wilkins, TP's gilded sigil (the honeybee) and more. Look after the business and it will look after you. For all you have done, for all of the little things and all of the much bigger things and for the burying of the bodies … I thank you.

It was fun reading about the Discworld Conventions. At one in Liverpool, “the available food included what was widely agreed to have been one of the last servings of that dying culinary phenomenon, the Great British Curry, complete with obligatory sultanas, and there was something jelly-based for pudding.”Rob may not have come into Terry's life until much later but this was being worked on before he was taken from us for too soon and we are given insights by his friends, family and former work colleagues to give us a book that is bursting with detail that it could almost have been completely written by the man himself. I wasn't sure what I was going to make of this to be honest. I have been a Pratchett fan since pretty much the beginning and my loyalty and love to Sir PTerry is one of the constants of my life. I didn't know what Rob was going to do in this book and I was very, very nervous. I needn't have worried. This is a wonderful, funny, glorious and deeply moving thing. I read it so fast and then as the last chapter loomed I slowed right down because I just didn't want it to end. And when I finally finished it, I cried and cried and cried. Rob Wilkins, Terry Pratchett’s former assistant and friend, is writing the official biography of the late Discworld author, which will move from his childhood to the “embuggerance” of the Alzheimer’s disease he was diagnosed with in 2007.

PEOPLE THINK THAT STORIES ARE SHAPED BY PEOPLE. IN FACT, IT’S THE OTHER WAY AROUND.’ At the time of his death in 2015, award-winning and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett was working on his finest story yet – his own. At six years old, Terry was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything. He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At s ‘PEOPLE THINK THAT STORIES ARE SHAPED BY PEOPLE. IN FACT, IT’S THE OTHER WAY AROUND.’ At the time of his death in 2015, award-winning and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett was working on his finest story yet – his own. At six years old, Terry was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything. He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At sixty-six, Terry had lived a life full of achievements: becoming one of the UK’s bestselling writers, winning the Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Following his untimely death from Alzheimer’s disease, the mantle of completing Terry’s memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author’s literary estate. Drawing on his own extensive memories, along with those of Terry’s family, friends, fans and colleagues, Rob recounts Terry’s extraordinary story – from his early childhood to the literary phenomenon that his Discworld series became; and how he met and coped with the challenges that ‘The Embuggerance’ of Alzheimer’s brought with it. ‘Of all the dead authors in the world, Terry Pratchett is the most alive.’– John Lloyd [118]…more Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography by Rob Wilkins – eBook Details At six years old, our friend and favourite writer of books Terry Pratchett was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything. He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At sixty-six, Terry had lived a life full of achievements: becoming one of the UK’s bestselling writers, winning the Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Transworld managing director Larry Finlay said that “only Wilkins” could have written the “intimate, engaging and revealing portrait of one of the UK’s most loved and most missed authors”.And what a job he's done. Terry had begun making notes for an autobiography but sadly did not live long enough to write it. In his absence Rob Wilkins has done an absolutely marvellous job of telling Terry's life story from his childhood when he didn't enjoy reading to the powerhouse who regularly gave us two sublime books a year. Before his death, Terry was working on an autobiography, which was never completed—but contrary to the hard-drive containing all of his unpublished fiction, which, in accordance with his final wishes, was ritually destroyed by a steamroller, Rob took it upon himself to finish what Terry had started. He draws largely from Terry’s unfinished manuscript, but also from the stories of friends, family, and former colleagues… and if you thought that it wouldn’t be all that interesting until Terry becomes the beloved, bestselling author we all think of him as, then you would be very wrong. He lived a life filled with astonishing achievements in a variety of jobs, and had some peculiar hobbies and interests, ranging from electrical engineering, to beekeeping, gaming, rescuing tortoises, gardening, and casting insects in gold and silver. Always one with an inquisitive mind and easily kindled curiosity, Terry insisted on forging his own sword after being knighted for services to literature. It’s all illuminating, and I appreciated that Rob didn’t try to sugarcoat or hide Terry’s more disagreeable personality traits, such as his irascibility and ingratitude, but there were also many sweet, and even more funny passages. The book turns truly exceptional in the solemn final third though—right around when Terry starts exhibiting some worrying symptoms, which culminated in an earth-shattering diagnosis of Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a rare, visual variant of Alzheimer’s disease. But then he thought about it more seriously. “I wish I had started writing for a living earlier,” he said eventually. “I could probably have started to write full time about 10 years before I did.” Next, I learned that, “Terry used to describe himself as ‘horizontally wealthy,” meaning that money hadn’t changed the person that he was, he could just afford to buy more things. However, he made some interesting choices, “instead of a Delorean DMC-12, Terry bought a shepherd’s hut,” which is “where [he] had the idea for the character of Tiffany Aching.” Flabbergastingly, there were also quite some history lessons in this book. I, for example, had not known there was a nuclear incident scaled 5-out-of-7 in Pennsylvania in the 70s (as a European, I mostly heard about Chernobyl and the much later incident at Fukushima but not much else). It’s this kind of added value that make this shine even brighter.