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19
Mar 2023
Harrogate district author celebrates Deathday publication
A world where everyone’s life must end at the age of 90 is the setting for a Harrogate author’s first novel, due to be published next month.
The action in Deathday, by Colin Philpott, takes place in England in 2045, where euthanasia is not just legal but compulsory, and where severe economic depression in the wake of “the Great Pandemic” and Brexit, a collapse in the care system and inter-generational conflict have changed attitudes to death and old age.
Those people who still accept the law, plan for “Deathday parties”, while “evaders” try to escape abroad and “remainders” – people already over 90 who were spared at the time the law came in – live in colonies in rundown seaside resorts.
Meanwhile, the young King plots with politicians opposed to the laws which are enforced by the sinister National Age Regulation Authority.
The novel, which is published by Fisher King Publishing, is set in several different parts of England, including Yorkshire, Northumberland, Greater Manchester, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and London, and includes scenes in Harrogate locations such as Brimham Rocks, the Royal Hall, and the Army Foundation College.
Colin Philpott, who lives in Bishop Monkton, said:
Deathday is Colin Philpott’s first work of fiction. He has previously written three books about 20th-century history: A Place in History, which includes the stories of places in Britain touched by news events; Relics of the Reich, which examines how Germany has dealt with the buildings left by the Nazis; and Secret Wartime Britain, about hidden places in Britain that helped the war effort in the Second World War.
Colin worked for the BBC for 25 years as a journalist and senior executive. Later he was director of the National Media Museum in Bradford.
Rick Armstrong, managing director of Fisher King Publishing, said:
Deathday will be published on April 24 and will be available in print and digital versions worldwide.
Read more:
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