Acrostic spectator

In Competition No. 2996 you were invited to submit an acrostic sonnet in which the first letters of each line spell AT THE SPECTATOR. You weren’t obliged to make the theme of your sonnet this magazine and its contributors but many of you did, to great effect. (The tone was mainly though not universally affectionate.)
 
Dorothy Pope, Joseph Houlihan, George Thomson and Paul A. Freeman deserve a special mention for eye-catching contributions, and the winners, printed below, pocket £25 each. W.J. Webster takes £30.
 

A nest of singing birds they may not be
(Too individual in the way they speak);
Their talents, though, make quite a company,
High-class performers writing week on week.
Essential reading is the Howse report,
So full and yet so elegantly spare;
Past perfect, too, where Peter Jones has caught
Examples of what we and ancients share.
Contrasting in their styles, like blade and axe,
The Moore and Liddle duo slice and chop,
As, leading from the front, Page 3 attacks
Those failings seen as starting from the top.