Hilary Jolly, winner of St.. Paul's Cathedral Millennium Hymn Competition, has been using her gift with words since she could put pen to paper.
'My mother used to recite poetry as she did the housework - in the way that other people sing,' and when Hilary was only four years old, she wrote her first poem. But following her conversion at the age of 35, Hilary recognised that her gift with words was a gift from God and resolved to use it for him. 'I became a Christian and knowing that I have this gift, I decided from that moment: that gift is for God; he gave it to me, he shall have it back.'
For Hilary, that means using her poetry and hymns to speak about God and the Christian faith. And it is on God's faithfulness over the past 2,000 years that her winning hymn 'Through the Darkness of the Ages', concentrates. All the writers and composers who entered the Millennium Hymn Competition - over 550 of them from all over the world - were asked to write a set form and metre so that tunes and words matched. Then the judges assessed tunes and words separately, without knowing the composers' or writers' identities.
