Even before she suffered from multiple sclerosis, breast cancer and osteoporosis, Jane Macdonald, an experienced nurse from the Highlands of Scotland, was a firm believer that everyone should have the right to choose to die with dignity if their suffering became unbearable. Once stricken herself, she campaigned for a change in British law to make assisted dying legal and remove the threat of prosecution that currently hangs over doctors, nurses or loved ones in the UK.

In the end, in a London hospice, pneumonia relieved Macdonald of her suffering – and of making that final choice she had been postponing until she was “ready”. Because she wanted to live for as long as was bearable, she and her husband had put back until next year a planned trip to a clinic in Switzerland, where euthanasia is legal. She was adamant that every human being should have the “reassurance” of the right to die without distress and without endangering others.