Final Word

This week's Final Word comes from a futuristic novel that launched a philanderer's literary career:

"But to me the future is still black and blank - is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man."

The winner will receive a £20 book token. The winner of last week's competition, who identified Blaise Pascal's Pensées , was Ann Black of Oxford Brookes University.