Will Self

And Becker's thesis is that au fond, everybody has what he calls an immortality project, that in order to cope with the fear of death, you have a place you go to immediately that reassures you about your transcendence.

And for most people who have children, it's their children.

Unless they're writers, in which case it's often their work.

It has to be.

And for mum, it, of course, had to be the children as she got older.

And after her father's death, she became fatalistic.

She would walk around going, I'm going to die of cancer.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And this began in her 50s.

And she died in her mid-60s.

So for the back end of her life, there was a sense of fatiloquence about her anger as it got worse.

So in a sense, she was dragging me into the grave with her.

And after she died, the entire family had deconstructed.

My brother was already living in the country and partly in Ireland, my immediately older brother.

My brother Nick, who you were at school with, had gone back to the States as soon as he could.

So he was out of the picture.

I was the only person left in London.

My father had immigrated to Australia in 1981.

So I was there alone.

So that's why it's taken me so long to get over mum.