DIARY
HOPES AND DREAMS FOR
CAROL MIDGLEY: First we had 2024, then 2025. If it’s not one year, it’s the next. And now what? Spoiler alert! 2026! To which there’s only one response. “Wow”. Just “wow”.
HELEN GARNER: Another year, another major literary award, and – with depressing inevitability – yet more acclaim. Why can’t people leave one alone? Instead, they’re all out to get me – including the judges with their wretched “winners” envelopes and tiresome laudatory speeches.
All this, and when I go to the fridge I find that I’m clean out of butter. Not only that, but the corner shop doesn’t open for another hour. Why me, for crying out loud? Why?
THE RT HON LORD SUMPTION, OBE, PC, FSA, FRHISTS: What do we mean, exactly, when we talk of a “hope”, and, correspondingly, what exactly do we mean when we talk of a ‘dream’? Though the definitions of these two words are, in various ways, similar, they are, in many other ways, entirely different. These are the themes, loosely twinned, that I intend to explore in the penultimate part of this contribution.