Richard Attias

Global sports tournaments have a range of benefits that go far beyond the games themselves. They can transform the image of a country or a region. They bring people together and reveal new possibilities to a nation's youth.

When ministers in this government talk about investing in education and skills, about making the planning system work; about employment law reform and delivering transport and power generation and broadband communication infrastructure, we are talking about raising Britain's productivity.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.