It is a source of great fascination to me that almost every value that was commonly upheld in my youth has been overturned – and many values once deplored are now upheld. (David Frost was considered an absolute shocker for mentioning the word “contraception” in a television broadcast in the 1960s, as a new biography reveals; now children aged seven are to be taught such words.)
Attitudes to fatal illness have been revolutionised, in another example. When I was a young reporter, it was forbidden to use the word “cancer” in our newspapers. The powerful press baron Lord Beaverbrook decreed that it was “unlucky” to print the word “cancer”. The acceptable euphemism was “a long illness”. And sometimes, in this reversal of values, society swings from one extreme of the pendulum to the other. Not only is cancer quite openly spoken about now: it can also be considered quite weird to conceal it, or to regard a diagnosis as something private.
