Bernard MacLaverty’s career is long and distinguished. His recent collection Blank Pages shows that in his early 80s his standards are as high as ever. Story after story compels you to relish it through to its natural ending, and then to start the next. ‘The Miraculous Candidate’ is almost 50 years old, and I read it out at the end of every year to my own candidates who are about to face into the last English exam of their school careers. Fourteen-year-old John is sitting his science exam, but receives a paper that means nothing to him and leaves him in a state of desperate panic. So as his granny advised, he prays to the patron saint of examinations, St Joseph of Cupertino, with unexpected results. This always prompts laughter, the kind that comes from pent-up tension.

First published in Secrets and other stories, Blackstaff Press, 1977