Great British Suicides

This book features: David 'Screaming Lord' Sutch, Ian Curtis, Justin Fashanu, Tony Hancock, Billy MacKenzie, Virginia Woolf, David Rappaport, Joe Meek, Ted Moult, Terence Donovan, Buster Edwards, and Sarah Kane...Death by one's own hand. It's a macabre subject, but one that is endlessly fascinating. How does someone feel themselves so without hope that they have to kill themselves? And when that person is talented andloved by millions, it seems all the more tragic. It doesn't seem to matter that the person can make the entire nation laugh, like Tony Hancock, or enthrall the reading public as Virginia Woolf managed. Few people would have suspected that the man who enlivened so many election campaigns, Lord Sutch, would also end up in the same sad state. The amazing story of Joy Division's Ian Curtis continues to fascinate today with a movie about his short life recently released.Others have been made famous by the way in which they ended their lives. All have gripping tales which are by turns tragic and gruesome. Whether depressed, angry or sad, it is a final step that many have felt it necessary to take.Then there are the people who take their own lives as a political statement - the suicide bombers who have brought so much carnage to contemporary life. What kind of a desire for revenge can provoke someone to go that far and how do they go about doing it? Writer Sue Smart looks at the favoured methods of suicide and considers the impact it has on our culture and our understanding of what our lives mean. From the greatest and most-loved members of our society to the worst monsters who take their lives in prison rather than face up to their crimes, this is an unflinching look at the last taboo.