Author of The God Delusion suffered ‘minor stroke’ in UK and is now recuperating at home

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Richard Dawkins has had a stroke on the eve of his tour of Australia and New Zealand.

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Management for the 74-year-old author of The God Delusion said he had suffered a “minor stroke” in the UK last Saturday but had already returned home from hospital.

The health scare has caused him to postpone his tour, his management said in a message passed on to ticket holders on Friday.

“On Saturday night Richard suffered a minor stroke, however he is expected in time to make a full or near full recovery,” the statement said. “He is already at home recuperating.

“This unfortunately means Richard will be unable to make his planned Australian and New Zealand tour. He is very disappointed that he is unable to do so but looks forward to renewing his plans in the not too distant future.”

By Thursday he had recovered enough to use Twitter, plugging a book called God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, for which he had written the foreword.

Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) My dear friend Dan Barker has written a wonderful book, for which I’ve done the forward, that you should read. https://t.co/pnQHaQT7h0

The famous atheist was due to begin his tour at the Sydney Opera House on 28 February and move on to Brisbane and Melbourne before crossing the Tasman to speak at the NZ festival in Wellington on 4 March.

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The events were to be centred around his recently published second memoir and 13th book, Brief Candle in the Dark. His first book, The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, has sold more than 1m copies. The God Delusion, the 2006 book for which he is best known, has sold more than 3m copies.

A steadfast critic of religion, who nevertheless recently criticised leading UK cinema chains for refusing to screen an advert featuring the Lord’s Prayer, Dawkins has regularly been named one of Britain’s top public intellectuals.

He also coined the term “meme” to describe a self-replicating unit that transmits cultural ideas, a rather loftier description than its current manifestation as an infinite cascade of sad frogs named Pepe.

Memes, Dawkins told the Guardian in 2013, were “cultural replicators, the cultural equivalent of a gene, the cultural equivalent of DNA”, adding “the internet is a first-class ecology for memes to spread”.