Siobhán McSweeney: How close have you come to death?

How close have you come to death?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Siobhán McSweeney said elsewhere, not written here

Physically, falling off my bike two years ago. Emotionally, when my mother died when I was 27.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 December 2023 source ↗

Others on this question

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Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

And actually now having had the advantage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and being able to look at some of the records of what the apartheid government was doing, the thing that is surprising to me is why so many of us survived. I mean, how is it that they did not assassinate more of us?

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

Bernadine Evaristo English author and academic

Travelling Europe with a friend, when I was 29. She was driving and the brakes went, on one of those vertiginous Italian mountains. It was terrifying for the 20 minutes it took to coast down the mountain.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 July 2020 source ↗

Jonathan Rhys Meyers Irish actor

I’ve been in six car accidents – none of them while I was driving.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 August 2018 source ↗

Sofia Helin Swedish actress

When I had a bicycle accident when I was 24. I was on a bridge going down; the bicycle broke and I smashed to the ground, face first. I broke my jaw and my teeth, and had to have plastic surgery. It all took half a year and then, funnily enough, I got my first big job – a TV series – with what I thought of then as this big, ugly scar.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 September 2020 source ↗