Lucy Vickery

Spectator Competition: Memorials for monsters

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issue 27 April 2024

Competition 3346 invited you to write an ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’. There were fewer Putins than expected but both T Rex and Caligula cropped up more than once. It was a strong field and hard to whittle down but £25 goes to each of the following.

Beast, twelve feet tall and forty long,
Fast, clever and immensely strong,
With eight-inch teeth and fearsome jaws,
The ultimate in carnivores,
He ruled the Mesozoic age,
Exulting in his cruel rage.
But something then occurred to bring
The mighty tyrant lizard king
Down to extinction from his throne;
The cause of death is still unknown.
Of theories there is quite a range:
Disease, volcanoes, climate change,
Or p’raps the earth could not avoid
A rather deadly asteroid.
His legacy’s not what he planned:
Mistaken for a glam rock band.

Nicholas Hodgson
















Well, ‘Little Boots’ has clearly made his mark
on history when wearing adult shoes:
the senators were slaughtered for a lark,
their grisly deaths, it seems, would light his fuse.
Declaring war on Neptune – like the sea
his thoughts grew ever more tempestuous.
Was





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