A real witch never casually steps out of her body, leaving it empty. Eleven-year-old Tiffany does. And there’s something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient and horrible, which can’t die . . .

Terry Pratchett earned a place in the hearts of readers the world over with his bestselling Discworld series – but in recent years he became equally well-known as an outspoken campaigner for causes including Alzheimer’s research and animal rights. A Slip of the Keyboard brings together the best of Pratchett’s non fiction writing on his life, on his work, and on the weirdness of the world: from Granny Pratchett to Gandalf’s love life; from banana daiquiris to books that inspired him; from getting started as a writer to the injustices that he fought to end.

With his trademark humour, humanity and unforgettable way with words, this collection offers an insight behind the scenes of Discworld into a much loved and much missed figure – man and boy, bibliophile and computer geek, champion of hats, orang-utans and the right to a good death.

With a foreword by Neil Gaiman

In this and indeed other lives there are givers and takers. It’s safe to say that vampires are very much in the latter camp. They don’t have much time for the givers of this world – except perhaps mealtimes – and even less for priests. Mightily Oats has not picked a good time to be a priest. Lancre’s newest residents are a thoroughly modern, sophisticated vampire family. They’ve got style and fancy waistcoats. They’re out of the casket and want a bite of the future. But they haven’t met the neighbours yet: between them and Lancre stand Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. And Magrat, who is trying to combine witchcraft and nappies. And young Agnes, although she is really in two minds about everything. Mightily Oats knows he has a prayer, but he wishes he had an axe.

This is the story of Jekub, the Dragon in the Hill with great big teeth and a great loud voice. (Well, that’s according to the nomes, but they are only four inches tall.)  When humans threaten their new home in the quarry, the natural thing would be to run and hide. But the nomes have got the wild idea that they should fight back. After all, everyone knows that nomes are faster and smarter than humans, and now they have a secret weapon . . .

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. The last thing the wizard Drum Billet did, before Death laid a bony hand on his shoulder, was to pass on his staff of power to the eighth son of an eighth son. Unfortunately for his colleagues in the chauvinistic (not to say misogynistic) world of magic, he failed to check that the baby in question was a son. Everybody knows that there’s no such thing as a female wizard. But now it’s gone and happened, there’s nothing much anyone can do about it. Let the battle of the sexes begin…

THERE’S A WEREWOLF WITH PRE-LUNAR TENSION IN ANKH-MORPORK. AND A DWARF WITH ATTITUDE AND A GOLEM WHO’S BEGUN TO THINK FOR ITSELF. But for Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City Watch, that’s only the start… There’s treason in the air. A crime has happened. He’s not only got to find out whodunit, but howdunit too. He’s not even sure what they dun. But soon as he knows what the questions are, he’s going to want some answers.

The post was an old thing, of course, but it was so old that it had magically become new again. Moist von Lipwig is a con artist and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork’s ailing postal service back on its feet. It’s a tough decision. The post is a creaking old institution, overshadowed by new technology. But there are people who still believe in it, and Moist must become one of them if he’s going to see that the mail gets though, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer. Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too. Perhaps there’s a shot at redemption in the mad world of the mail, waiting for a man who’s prepared to push the envelope…

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. You mess with it at your peril. You can let it move fast or slowly but what you mustn’t do is allow it to stop. On the Discworld time management is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it’s wasted (like the underwater – how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there’s never enough time. But the construction of the world’s first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And when time stands still, everything stops with it. Then, there really is no future.

MIGHTY BATTLES! REVOLUTION! DEATH! WAR! (AND HIS SONS TERROR AND PANIC, AND DAUGHTER CLANCY). The oldest and most inscrutable empire on the Discworld is in turmoil, brought about by the revolutionary treatise What I did on My Holidays. Workers are uniting, with nothing to lose but their water buffaloes. Warlords are struggling for power. War (and Clancy) are spreading throughout the ancient cities. And all that stands in the way of terrible doom for everyone is: Rincewind the Wizard, who can’t even spell the word ‘wizard’… Cohen the barbarian hero, five foot tall in his surgical sandals, who has had a lifetime’s experience of not dying… …and a very special butterfly.

DISCWORLD GOES TO WAR, WITH ARMIES OF SARDINES, WARRIORS, FISHERMEN, SQUID AND AT LEAST ONE VERY CAMP FOLLOWER. As two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch faces unpleasant foes who are out to get him… and that’s just the people on his side. The enemy might be even worse. Jingo, the 21st in Terry Pratchett’s phenomenally successful Discworld series, makes the World Cup look like a friendly five-a-side.

THE FAIRIES ARE BACK – BUT THIS TIME THEY DON’T JUST WANT YOUR TEETH… Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven are up against real elves. It’s Midsummer Night. No times for dreaming… With full supporting cast of dwarfs, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers and one orang-utan. And lots of hey-nonny-nonny and blood all over the place.

‘Whoever said you can’t fool an honest man wasn’t one’. The Royal Bank is facing a crisis, and it’s time for a change of management. Who would not to wish for that job? It’s a job for life. But, as former con-man Moist von Lipwig is learning, the life is not necessarily for long. The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There’s something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is pretty nameless), it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss, and people actually want to know where the money’s gone. A 300 year old wizard is after his girlfriend, he’s about to be exposed as a fraud, but the Assassins Guild might get him first. In fact lot of people want him dead. Oh. And every day he has to take the Chairman for walkies. Everywhere he looks he’s making enemies. What he should be doing is . . . Making Money!

THE SHOW MUST GO ON, AS MURDER, MUSIC AND MAYHEM RUN RIOT IN THE NIGHT… The Opera House, Ankh-Morpork…a huge, rambling building, where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by a strangely-familiar eveil mastermind in a hideously-deformed evening dress… At least, he hopes so. But Granny Weatherwax, Discworld’s most famous witch, is in the audience. And she doesn’t hold with that sort of thing. So there’s going to be trouble (but nevertheless a good evenin’s entertainment with murders you can really hum…)

‘Trousers. That’s the secret…Put on trousers and the world changes. We walk different. We act different. I see these girls and I think: idiots! Get yourself some trousers!’ Women belong in the kitchen – everyone knows that. Not in jobs, pubs or indeed trousers, and certainly not on the front line. Polly Perks has to become a boy in a hurry if she wants to find her brother in the army. Cutting off her hair and wearing the trousers is easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape takes more time. And there’s a war on. There’s always a war on. Polly and her fellow raw recruits are suddenly in the thick of it. All they have on their side is the most artful sergeant in the army and a vampire with a lust for coffee. Well . . . they have the Secret. And it’s time to make a stand.

Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job. Henceforth, Death is no longer going to be the end, merely the means to an end. It’s an offer Mort can’t refuse. As Death’s apprentice he’ll have free board, use of the company horse – and being dead isn’t compulsory. It’s a dream job – until he discovers that it can be a killer on his love life…

The alchemists of the Discworld have discovered the magic of the silver screen. But what is the dark secret of Holy Wood hill? It’s up to Victor Tugelbend (“Can’t sing. Can’t dance. Can handle a sword a little.”) and Theda Withel (“I come from a little town you’ve probably never heard of”) to find out… Moving Pictures, the ninth Discworld novel is a gloriously funny saga set against the background of a world gone mad!

‘Look after the dead’, said the priests, ‘and the dead will look after you.’ Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when, like Teppic, you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country rather earlier than expected, and your treasury is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. He’d had the best education money could buy of course, but unfortunately the syllabus at the Assassin’s Guild in Ankh-Morpork did not cover running a kingdom and basic financial acumen…

It’s all change for Moist von Lipwig, swindler, conman, and (naturally) head of the Royal Bank and Post Office. A steaming, clanging new invention, driven by Dick Simnel, the man with t’flat cap and t’sliding rule, is drawing astonished crowds – including a few particularly keen young men armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear – and suddenly it’s a matter of national importance that the trains run on time.

DEATH IS MISSING – PRESUMED… ER… GONE. Which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn. Meanwhile, on a little farm far, far away, a tall, dark stranger is turning out to be really good with a scythe. There’s a harvest to be gathered in…

When Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in his fifties he was angry – not with death but with the disease that would take him there, and with the suffering disease can cause when we are not allowed to put an end to it. In this essay, broadcast to millions as the BBC Richard Dimblebly Lecture 2010 and previously only available as part of A Slip of the Keyboard, he argues for our right to choose – our right to a good life, and a good death too.