Growing pains | 3 November 2007

Competition No. 2521: Tall tale

You are invited to submit an anecdote by a dinner-party bore that culminates in the dubious claim: ‘And that is how I came to eat a cucumber sandwich with the King of Norway’. (150 words maximum.) Entries to ‘Competition 2521’ by 15 November or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.

In Competition 2518 you were invited to provide an extract from the adolescent diary of a famous historical figure. Teenagers today publish their diaries online as blogs. How they can bring themselves to do this is beyond me — my own adolescent outpourings, a predictably toecurling blend of tormented introspection and pretentious pseudo-philosophy punct­uated by quotations from Nietzsche and Leonard Cohen — were kept firmly under lock and key.

Simon Machin gives a tantalising glimpse into the world of a pubescent Napoleon: ‘Puffed Caporals behind the stables with Soult. “I’ll be a Marshall one day,” he said. Yeah! Like I’ll be Emperor, doh! …’ while Brian Murdoch’s hormonally charged 15-year-old Queen Victoria frets about the size of her bum as much as about the prospect of becoming queen.