Spectator literary competition No. 2830
This week you are invited to choose, from different authors, two characters who have the same job or position (e.g., Shakespeare’s Quince and Lewis Carroll’s Carpenter, Mr Collins and Mr Slope, Holmes and Philip Marlowe) and give an excerpt of not more than 150 words from their conversation on meeting. Entries should be submitted by email to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 8 January.
The recent challenge to come up with a Christmas list, in verse, in the style of the poet of your choice was another popular one and it was tough to whittle the entry down to just six.
There were neat references to Dorothy Parker’s ‘One Perfect Rose’ from Noel Petty and Martin Parker, and I liked Basil Ransome-Davies’s riff on MacNeice’s ‘Bagpipe Music’. Melanie Branton’s Shakespeare almost made the cut: ‘Hoping I get a keg of sack or pouch of snuff,/ A statement earring, in-your-face and blinging,/ Desiring Marlowe’s codpiece, Jonson’s ruff,/ But fearing Anne will buy me something minging’, and honourable mentions, too, to Philip Roe, John Whitworth and John Beaton, who stepped very ably into the shoes of the magnificent William Topaz McGonagall.
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