THE assisted-dying Bill was thrown out by the House of Lords. (Right To Die Halted By Lords, Readers' Letters, May 13).

It was a very moving debate with good points made on both sides.

It was influenced a year or so ago, by the BBC's "secret filming" of old people in a hospital.

They were being treated shabbily, to put it mildly.

Church leaders are against any change in the law on the right to die. But they tend to be defending an empire built before they were even born (I suppose individual vicars are split on the issue).

Public opinion has swung in favour of the right to die in a big way.

There are no easy solutions. It can be a nightmare, whichever way you look at it.

Death is a ripe area for God-given black-comedy.

I try to do a bit of taboo-busting; and death is a taboo subject; like sex was to the Victorians. It's all over the place now.

Max Nottingham,

St Faith's Street,

Lincoln.

Updated: 10:36 Monday, May 22, 2006