In Competition No. 2605 you were invited to compose an anthem for a county of your choice. Some competitors played it straight but many chose to subvert the anthem’s traditional fawning tone. Northants, in particular, got it in the neck, with Greg Whitehead (who lives there) and John Brown (who doesn’t) struggling to find a redeeming feature between them.
The postbag been swelled in recent months by a welcome influx of entrants from the US. They were out in force this week, casting an often caustic eye o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
A lot of entries read well on the page but I couldn’t imagine them being sung anthemically. On the home front, William Danes-Volkov’s submission had the feel of a protest song and I could envisage lusty, alcohol-fuelled renditions in the pubs of Kent. I also enjoyed Mary Holtby’s rousing tribute to those proud counties that have been wiped from the administrative map.
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