Outside the National Gallery last week I watched a living statue of the Grim Reaper. There was something slightly medieval about this figure, with his grinning skull and scythe, among the tourists milling in the sunshine. But he conveyed to me at least, a sombre truth: that we are all going to die one day, pantomime reminder or not.
If you are a billionaire in your early 30s, you might well have the philanthropic impulse of Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, who has recently announced that he and his wife plan to give away most of their fortune to cure, manage or eradicate all diseases in the world by the end of this century. But we all still have to die of something, even if it is merely old age; surely none of us seriously wants to be immortal?
