Spectator competition winners: Goldfinger for tots

In Competition No. 3228, you were invited to provide a well-known extract from adult literature rewritten for inclusion in an anthology of children’s literature.

It was Julie Burchill’s verdict, in this magazine, on Sally Rooney’s latest novel that prompted me to set this task: ‘Her writing is so blank,’ she wrote, ‘that in parts it reads like a children’s starter book — Janet and John Get Naked and Say Stuff About the Pointlessness of Existence.’

One of the many high points in a terrific entry was John MacRitchie’s recasting of Wolf Hall as Francesca Simon might have written it: ‘Horrid Henry wakes up one morning feeling really cross. Weepy Wolsey says he has to be nice to Catty Catherine. Well, he’ll see about that…’

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William Freer

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Honourable mentions also go to unlucky losers David Blakey, Isobel Murdoch, Roger Charlton and Brian Murdoch.