The award-winning series in which writers create a fictional response to the week's news. In a week which has seen debate around a possible 'fair innings approach' to the allocation of drugs to patients dependent on criteria of 'wider social benefit', and in which scientists warned that loneliness in old age is twice as bad for your health as obesity, Lucy Caldwell takes a look at the things we value most in life and how we in turn are valued.

The Lonely Passion of Judith McCrudden
By Lucy Caldwell

An elderly woman finds herself considering what her life is really worth.

Novelist and dramatist, Lucy Caldwell is the author of three novels, 'Where They Were Missed' (2006), 'The Meeting Point' (2011), which was awarded the Dylan Thomas Prize, and 'All the Beggars Riding' (2013), chosen for Belfast's and Derry's One City One Book initiative. Lucy's stage plays ('Leaves', 'Guardians', 'Notes to Future Self') and radio dramas ('Girl From Mars', 'Avenues of Eternal Peace', 'Witch Week', 'The Watcher on the Wall') have won awards including the George Devine Award and the Imison Award. In 2011 she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for her body of work to date. Show less