A letter written by Dr. Mark Taubert after David Bowie’ s death in January and originally published on our BMJ SPCare blog, was read out by the actor Benedict Cumerbatch at Hay Literary Festival on Saturday the 28th May 2016. Cumberbatch performed the reading as part of an event called Letters Live, organized by Shaun Usher and Simon Garfield. Letters Live celebrates the very best in literary correspondence, and returned to Hay Festival 2016 with a star-studded cast. The format is simple; letters of historical and cultural importance are performed by a series of stars in front of a live audience.

In the case of Saturday’s session, the performers represented a who’s who of British acting royalty, with Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander, Maxine Peake, Toby Jones, Louise Brealey and Mark Strong all taking to the stage of the Tata tent to narrate. Earlier this year, the singer Jarvis Cocker had read out Taubert’s letter at a Letters Live event in Freemason’s hall in London (video available here in this Telegraph article).

Mark Taubert‘s letter to Bowie was the last act of the evening, and Benedict Cumberbatch thanked ‘Dr Mark’, who was in attendance at the end of the reading. Speaking after the event, Dr Taubert said that it had been a magical moment, and that he had been particularly struck by audience members asking questions about palliative care and discussing care at the end of life after the event finished.

Benedict Cumberbatch descibed Letters Live as a way to pause and think: ‘Letters Live makes us pause and imagine the lives behind the letters read and the circumstances of their origin. It’s a privilege to read this most ancient of communications live to an audience. A truly inspiring event.’