Banyana Banyana coach Vera Pauw.
In a statement released on Thursday Larry Finlay, MD at Transworld Publishers said: “It is with immeasurable sadness that we announce that author Sir Terry Pratchett has died at the age of 66.”
“I was deeply saddened to learn that Sir Terry Pratchett has died. The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds.”
In the voice of his popular character Death, who talks exclusively in capital letters, Pratchett’s Twitter account announced:
Followed by:
After a link to his publisher’s obituary, the last tweet reads:
“Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March 2015. Diagnosed with PCA in 2007, he battled the progressive disease with his trademark determination and creativity, and continued to write. He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease,” Findlay said.
“Terry faced his Alzheimer’s disease (an ’embuggerance’, as he called it) publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.”
A Just Giving page donating to the Research Institute to the Care of Older People (RICE) has been set up in his memory.