2006. Silvers continued as sole editor until his death in March 2017. In later years, he described his motivation for continuing to edit the Review: "I feel it's a fantastic opportunity – because of the freedom of it, because of the sense that there are marvelous, intensely interesting, important questions that you have a chance to try to deal with in an interesting way. That's an extraordinary opportunity in life. And you'd be crazy not to try and make the most of it." He said on another occasion: "We do what we want and don't try to figure out what the public wants." Asked in 2007 about who might succeed him as editor, Silvers replied: "It's not a question that's posing itself". In 2012, he added, "I can think of several people who would be marvelous editors." Silvers also edited or co-edited several essay anthologies, including Writing in America (1960); A Middle East Reader: Selected Essays on the Middle East (1991); The First Anthology: Thirty Years of the New York Review (1993); Hidden Histories of Science (1995); India: A Mosaic (2000); Doing It: Five Performing Arts (2001 (a collection of essays on the performing arts)); The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (2001); Striking Terror (2002); The Company They Kept (vol. 1, 2006; vol. 2, 2011); The Consequences to Come: American Power After Bush (2008); and The New York Review Abroad: Fifty Years of International Reportage (2013). In 2009, he wrote the essay "Dilemmas eines Herausgebers" ("Dilemmas of an editor") appearing in the Austrian journal Transit – Europäische Revue. He also served on the editorial committee of La Rivista dei Libri, the Italian-language edition of the Review, until it closed in 2010. Silvers never married or had children. He was linked romantically in the 1960s with Lady Caroline Blackwood. For more than four decades from 1975 until her death, he lived with Grace, Countess of Dudley (1923–2016), widow of the 3rd Earl of Dudley, with whom he shared a passion for opera. Silvers commented that Dudley's "fineness of mind and spirit has been the center of my life." A long-time pescetarian, Silvers "was struck by the essays of ... moral philosopher Peter Singer, who has written extensively about animal rights." Silvers died on March 20, 2017, at the age of 87, at his Manhattan home "after a brief illness". A memorial service was hosted by the New York Public Library in April