Episode 1

How do we approach and accept death?

In 1995, aged 42, Robert McCrum suffered a dramatic and near-fatal stroke - the subject of his acclaimed memoir My Year Off.

Ever since that life-changing event, he has lived in the shadow of death, unavoidably aware of his own mortality. And now, 21 years on, he is noticing a change - his friends are joining him there. Death has become his contemporaries' every third thought.

The question is no longer "who am I?" - but "how long have I got?" and "what happens next?"

With the words of Robert's favourite authors as travel companions, Every Third Thought takes us on a journey through a year and towards death itself. As he acknowledges his own and his friends' ageing, he confronts an existential question - in a world where we have learned to live well at all costs, can we make peace with what Freud calls "the necessity of dying"?

Searching for answers leads him to others for advice and wisdom.

Witty, lucid and provocative, this is an enthralling exploration of what it means to approach the end-game, and begin to recognise, perhaps reluctantly, that we are not immortal.

It all begins with Robert's sudden and unexpected fall in the street, resulting in a head injury...

Abridged in five parts by Barry Johnston

Read by Nicky Henson.

Producer: David Roper

A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in September 2017.