I spy

In Competition no. 2493 you were invited to take a famous scene from literature and retell it from the point of view of one of its minor characters. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were plucked by Tom Stoppard from the chorus line and catapulted into the limelight with dazzling results. A lot of you followed Stoppard down the Hamlet route, but tended to veer uneasily into dodgy cod-Shakespearean territory. While many went for pastiche, others, like Adrian Fry with his account of Bilbo Baggins’s eleventy-first birthday party filtered through the covetous eyes of Otho Sackville-Baggins, steered clear of the voice of the original author. Brian Murdoch’s take on Lucky Jim Dixon’s ‘Merrie England’ speech was impressive but the extra fiver goes to Bill Greenwell. The other winners, printed below, get £25 each.

Schoolroom, sir. Of commodious nature. Eighty juveniles, of variegated proportion; some of masculine gender, some of feminine gender. Designated as numerical individuals, inspection for the purpose of.