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If you could edit your past, what would you change?

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

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

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One of 24 questions in The Q&A here.

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 1 Arts and letters 29 Politics and public life 4 Business and finance 1 Sport 1
Read by age Any age In their thirties 8 In their forties 6 In their fifties 9 In their sixties 9 Seventy and beyond 4
Keir Starmer
My mum died in her early 70s, and for the last six or seven years of her life she couldn’t move, didn’t speak. By the time our children were born, she was too ill to communicate. I haven’t many regrets in life, but I do regret that they never got to know her, even though she was still alive for a few years. They couldn’t see her warmth, her spirit, her courage.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2023 source ↗

Chris Bryant
I’d have reported the tutor who asked me to read an essay to him sitting on the toilet as he lay soaping himself in the bath.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 September 2025 source ↗

Juliet Stevenson
I would find a much better way of looking after my mum in her last three years of dementia. I did my best, but it was incredibly difficult to find the right kind of care unless you’ve got £3,000 a week to spend.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 May 2026 source ↗

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