‘Merciful Release’: The History of the British Euthanasia Movement; Angels of Death: Exploring the Euthanasia Underground

‘Merciful Release’: The History of the British Euthanasia Movement

N D A Kemp

Manchester University Press, £14.99, pp 242

ISBN 0 7190 6124 5

Angels of Death: Exploring the Euthanasia Underground

Roger S Magnusson

Yale University Press, £25, pp 325

ISBN 0 300 09439 6

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Euthanasia might be a controversial issue, but one could be forgiven for thinking that we've heard it all before. The entrenched positions and arguments for and against the practice are well known, and nothing much seems to be shifting in the legal arena.

Two new books challenge this assessment. Kemp's ‘Merciful Release’ rewrites the history of the British euthanasia movement and the antecedents to the present debate. He gives a chronological overview from the 1870s, when the topic was first discussed in the public domain, through to the present time. This is a carefully researched book that argues that the history of euthanasia is often told backwards from the perspective of contemporary …