Explore the vast range of titles available.

After 38 years hosting the weekly \"Texaco Opera Quiz,\" heard on 325 radio stations in North America and in 26 European counties, Edward Downes retired. When the show beings its new 20-week season on Dec 14, 1996, Downes will be at home listening to the program as his audiences have for years. Few people in the music field have had as diverse a career as Downes.

\"The factor tending in favour of prosecution is that it is clear that both Sir [Edward Downes] and Lady Downes were able to book the hotel room themselves and that, nevertheless, Mr Downes undertook that act. However, the available evidence indicates that Mr Downes's parents had reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision to take their own lives and in assisting them, Mr Downes was wholly motivated by compassion. The deaths of Sir Edward, 85, who had conducted the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Royal Opera House for many years, and his wife, 74, was one of the most high-profile recent cases of British suicides at the Dignitas clinic. Sir Edward was almost blind and increasingly deaf and Lady Downes, a former ballet dancer, had terminal cancer. Captions: Lady Downes, a former ballet dancer who had been married to; Sir Edward for 54 years, had terminal cancer; Sir Edward Downes and his wife wanted an end to their serious health problems

Sir Edward Downes' son Caractacus was told he will not be charged over the death of his father and mother, Lady Joan, at Switzerland's Dignitas clinic.

The couple's son Caractacus, 41, and daughter Boudicca, 39, travelled to Switzerland to be at their parents' bedside as they died. Mr [EDWARD DOWNES] said his parents decided to go to Switzerland when they did because they were worried that his mother's health would deteriorate and prevent her from travelling.

The phrase \"sanctity of life\" has become the ultimate shield in any conversation about euthanasia. The words camouflage real-life situations when the sufferer's life ceases to be worth living. The phrase has a rather firm and unyielding religious underpinning and thus any intervention that hastens a person's exit is considered as playing God. Jack Kevorkian, unfairly dubbed Dr. Death by the media, brought the issue of assisted suicide center stage in this country when in 1998 he showed a videotaped suicide involving a patient with Lou Gehrig's disease on 60 Minutes. Convicted of second-degree murder, he served eight years behind bars. Kevorkian helped bring a taboo subject to the public arena that some find disconcerting. While every civilized society pays attention to the greater good of its people, individual rights and control of one's life are also cherished principles of such societies. With the assisted suicide of two prominent people, those limits are again being debated and tested.

Finally, further to the recent comments on the value of balance exercises in minimising the risk of \"falling off one's perch\", Mrs June Smedley describes how this became a major issue for her when, as a keen gardener, she found difficulty staying upright among her plants. She commends a simple piece of equipment, the Physio-med Balance Pad, on which she practises her own series of exercises: shifting her weight from foot to foot, twisting her upper torso, reaching up and so on. She says that just a few minutes twice a day on the pad has \"greatly improved my balance and confidence\". Meanwhile, Dr Adam Darowski, consultant physician at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary, devotes a chapter in his excellent Falls: The Facts (OUP, 2008) to the value of such exercises in preventing the serious consequences of falls - including 60,000 hip fractures a year. \"Nearly half of those aged 80 or over will fall at least once a year,\" he says, \"but those of us who work in this field of medicine have a great problem in persuading people of its importance.\"

What a perverse view of human-itthis represents. It not only fails to recognise the right of the individual to end a life that has become unbearable but fails to appreciate that - as Sir [Edward Downes] and Lady Joan have demonstrated - deciding to take your own life can be a final act of selfless love.

\"He told me that my mum had cancer,\" said Boudicca, her voice wavering as she recalled the conversation with Sir Edward Downes, the world-famous conductor. \"He told me of the last two weeks, of the checks mum had been having, and the various doctor appointments. And he told me the prognosis: a matter of months, possibly weeks. Then he just said, 'so we've decided, we're both going to Switzerland'.\" \"Mum was not frightened of dying, but she was frightened of a living death,\" she said. \"She loved her life and she was infuriated by any type of illness, even a cold, by anything that sapped her energy levels because she had stuff to do,\" said [Boudicca]. \"The idea of being increasingly weak, fragile and tired in the last weeks of her life were unbearable.\" Even at 74, [Joan] was the only person with more energy than her 3-year-old grandson, Zeki. They were given anti-nausea liquid, and after half an hour they swallowed the lethal shot that would bring their \"wonderful lives\" to an end. \"It was calm and dignified - as they wanted,\" said Boudicca. \"I will always know that they had a peaceful death - together.\"

THE decision of conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife Joan to end their lives at a Swiss clinic has reignited the euthanasia debate.