In Competition No. 2413 you were invited to supply a poem such as might have been written by the Revd Spooner.
William Archibald Spooner, the myopic, albino warden of New College, was not, as I had always imagined, a Victorian figure: his wardenship was 1903–24 and he died in 1930. As an educationist he would have been shocked if he had overheard his fellow Oxonian Wystan Auden referring dismissively to the poets ‘Sheets and Kelley’ and even more aghast had he lived to witness a feminist theatre group touring Britain in the 1970s under the name Cunning Stunts. My own favourite among his reputed blunders is ‘The Lord is a shoving leopard.’
This competition must have been hard work. I have consequently been lenient in interpreting the term Spoonerism. The winners, printed below, get £30, and Virginia Price Evans has the bonus fiver.
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