Spectator competition winners: famous authors on the art of seduction

The call for lessons in the art of seduction in the style of an author of your choice drew a large and stellar field. Henry James — whose labyrinthine sentences would surely bore the objects of his affection into submission — was a popular choice. Here he is, as expertly imagined by John Maddicott: ‘If her defences, imperfectly nurtured by an occasionally burnished but never entirely unshakeable conscience, were to be penetrated — and he allowed the delightful vulgarity of the thought to send a miniature frisson of undeniable pleasure through his diminutive frame — it must be by methods which, though crude in their essaying, combined the subtlety of experiment with the heavy-handed assertiveness of the tried and not infrequently tested.’ Children’s authors also cropped up a lot. I liked D.A. Prince’s touching account of an admirable but doomed attempt by Pooh and Piglet to help Eeyore find love: ‘It starts with a hum, a love-y sort of a little hum, with another person, and then you look into their eyes and a smile comes.