He’s never been rewarded by the literary Establishment and anyone reading his books is living in the mental world of an adolescent boy. But fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett’s announcement today that he has an early form of Alzheimer’s puts him in the Nobel Category for Humanity.

Pratchett’s books make you laugh and in CD format they have helped many a long car journey pass for the Beckett family. Despite my pretensions to literary elitism I am happy to confess that I like his gentle brand of other-worldly satire and look forward to more yet. But in a way this modest and funny announcement of one of life’s grimmest diseases and what he calls “an embuggarance” is his masterwork.