I have been thinking a lot about Michael Mosley. If you’re not in the UK, Mosley was a widely loved tv and radio doctor, a warm, enthusiastic, lovely-seeming man. He wrote various excellent books, in which he took quite complex scientific idea and explained them in simple and accessible ways. I loved his radio series Just One Thing, about a tiny habit you could adopt that made a big difference to your health (you can listen here). Radio is an intimate medium and I heard so many episodes in recent weeks that he’d started feeling like my 9.45am friend.
He died last week in Greece, having become lost or confused walking back from the beach in 40 degree heat. Here’s an obituary.
There are so many vividly sad aspects to this story - the initial shock of his going missing, the hope that he would simply reappear and laugh at all the fuss, the sickening feeling you got as the hours turned into days, his children flying in to help with the searches. His poor, poor wife, waiting to hear if her world would implode.