Final Word

This week's Final Word comes from a novelist immersed in H2O:

"Stan Booth shuts off at last the bucket-ladder engine. The sudden, dripping quiet strikes like a knell. 'Someone best explain.' We trip over empty bottles. Peer from the rails. Ribbons of mist. Obscurity. On the bank in the thickening dusk, in the will o'wisp dusk, abandoned but vigilant, a motor-cycle."

The winner of last week's competition, who correctly identified E. O. Wilson's The Diversity of Life , is Chris Barrow of Swansea.