[West Ender]

Even growing up as a good Convent schoolgirl, I could never reconcile myself to the "final repentance and forgiveness" idea. Take Adolf Hitler: just suppose that, in the minute before he blew his brains out in that bunker in Berlin, he saw the error of his ways and said, "I've been a bad boy but I'm really sorry now, God. Please forgive all my sins". Even if he meant it, would he deserve to have the slate wiped clean, despite having the deaths of millions of people on his hands?

It's too simplistic, though maybe I'm coming at this from the Roman Catholic angle which is, after all, the one in which I was educated. Catholicism has the concept of Purgatory, you pay for a while then, when you've done your "time", you get admitted to Heaven. It also has the anomoly that if you confess and repent your sins, at the moment of your death, it's, "Come home, Hermione, all is forgiven", and you go straight to Paradise (Do not pass Purgatory. Do not collect £200).

A very wise, highly educated and intellectual old nun, the headmistress of Paddock House School until she retired in 1955, once had a theological discussion with me and my form at school. Surprisingly, for a nun, she didn't have any of the romanticised notions of an after-life spent hymn-singing and "sitting at the right hand of God" that tend to be the norm. When asked to define Heaven, Sister Mary Anthony replied, "Heaven is a state of mind". It impressed me then and it still does.