One of my favourite characters in children’s books is J K Rowling’s Moaning Myrtle, the spectral schoolgirl who haunts the second-floor girls’ bathroom at Hogwarts, seizing every opportunity to spread a little gloom.

When she succumbed to the fatal stare of a basilisk lurking in the plumbing, Myrtle was in her early teens – the age at which, according to a recent study conducted by academics at University College London, childhood optimism goes into sharp decline. From trailing clouds of glory, you might say, to sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death.

Examining how optimism changes in childhood, the UCL researchers recruited a group of children and adolescents aged between 8 and 17, who were asked to play a treasure-gathering game. While the sunny hyper-optimism of the youngest children remained undimmed by disappointing results, among the 12- to 13-year-olds a stiff dose of realism set in – a dwindling of expectation that continued among the 16- to 17-year-olds.

Reading this, many parents might think that the process described in the study is the one known to non-academics as “growing up”: the cumulative early exposure to disappointment by which most of us learn, a) that Father Christmas isn’t going to bring us a pony; b) that Father Christmas doesn’t actually exist, and so on – until eventually we end up more-or-less reconciled to the ordinariness of life.

Optimism as a philosophy was notoriously satirised by Voltaire in his 1759 novel, Candide, in the person of Dr Pangloss who, having endured every imaginable horror and degradation, continues to insist that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But in their research summary, the UCL academics make a case for groundless optimism as a foundation for future success. “Believing that good things will happen in life,” they argue “is essential to maintain motivation and achieve highly ambitious goals.”

So Pangloss was right, after all. Unquiet in its final resting-place in the Panthéon, I imagine the sprightly shade of Voltaire would be not at all astonished.

In praise of Evensong 

Lamenting the sometimes dissonant settings by modern composers to be heard in Radio 3’s weekly live broadcast of Choral Evensong, a correspondent to the Daily Telegraph wondered “if cathedral choirmasters now believe they have to be ‘with it’?” In response, a second correspondent defends the enrichment of the choral repertoire with new liturgical music, praising “the fearless musicianship with which young choristers master challenging music”.

Over the years, I have trained myself to listen to whatever Radio 3 chooses to broadcast, even if I don’t like it, in the hope of educating my ear (although I draw the line at Percy Grainger). I don’t always love the settings of Choral Evensong (I share Bernard Shaw’s view of Stanford’s stately choral works). But I am grateful still to be able to hear that most beautiful of services.

A regular at choral evensong at the Old Royal Naval College when I lived in London, I had not realised how rare a privilege this was until I moved to Kent, where priests in charge of multiple parishes must whizz from church to church with never a moment for the quiet contemplation of evening prayers. So whether the anthem is by Tallis or the very young composer, Benedict Tanner, I am glad still to be able to join the congregation for Evensong – even if it is not in my own parish church