In Competition No. 2656 you were invited to submit a dialogue between two well-known figures from different centuries, each using the argot of the time.
You responded to this challenge with your usual verve and skill, and I especially liked Frank McDonald’s conversation between Julius Caesar and Churchill (Templumcollis) on the trials of wartime leadership.
The winners, printed below, get £30 each and the bonus fiver goes to Brian Murdoch for an entertaining exchange between literary giants about Britain’s woeful performance in sport and song, of the sort that is to be heard in pubs up and down the land.
GC: ‘By Christes bludde and Goddes bones, saye me, Shakespeare, what men in Engeland nowadaye tell sootheliche of sporte and of playe.’
WS: ‘Well, as I am Will, so will I tell you, Dan Chaucer, and with a will, yet there will be naught for your comfort.
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