Someone commented to me about the different US and UK covers of Margaret Reith and my book on Social Work in End-of-Life and Palliative Care (see 5th May 2009). One point is that they both use pictures of nature, leaves and so on. Does this reflect a graphic design or marketing view that palliative care needs to be presented as part of calming natural processes? In the various options that the American designer offered he actually preferred a human beings picture, but we couldn’t find one that really expressed what we wanted. A completely abstract design seems to be unfashionable among my publishers; out of focus colour photos seem to be the norm nowadays.

The frost-edged dead leaves of the British edition have also aroused comment; people have said this is perhaps not what end-of-life and palliative care is about. Cicely Saunders talked about living until you die. Margaret and I played no part in this design and it is an attractive picture. But if you’re looking for metaphor, our advice is to go for the hard-back. Because of the cropping of the photos, the slightly more space on the hardback cover discloses a green shoot. And we certainly would say that one of the things about end-of-life and palliative care social work is that for many people ‘dying well’ does renew the life of those who are left behind.