Do Not Resuscitate: The Life and Afterlife of Maurice Saatchi

Maurice Saatchi is dead.

He is standing in front of the Gates of Heaven. Arrival halls worse than Heathrow Airport. Queues. Overcrowding. A tidal wave of Paradise seekers. ID scans. Voice and facial recognition. X-ray examinations. Background checks. It all seems like a bad dream.

His tests expose abnormalities. He is charged with multiple breaches of immigration law and detained pending a full jury trial.

The verdict will reveal the biggest secret of all time: why some people go to Heaven and others to Hell.

Do Not Resuscitate is a bold statement. Maurice Saatchi, a towering figure in the worlds of business and politics, frames his unsparing self-portrait with the conceit of a celestial trial in which his application to pass through the Gates of Heaven is heard before a jury featuring luminaries like Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, Chairman Mao, and Margaret Thatcher. In seeking admission to Heaven, Saatchi offers a defence like no other.

Maurice Saatchi graduated from the London School of Economics, where he won the MacMillan Prize for Sociology. He went on to become a Governor of LSE. During his time in advertising he transformed the industry, taking Saatchi & Saatchi from an eleven-staff company to being the biggest agency globally. He worked with Margaret Thatcher and John Major on four consecutive General Election victories. In 1996 he entered the House of Lords, and later became Shadow Minister for the Treasury and the Cabinet Office. He became Co-Chairman of the UK Conservative Party, and Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies. His campaigning efforts in Parliament led to the passage of the 2016 Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Act.