Spectator competition winners: Gradgrind’s fan letter to Michael Gove

The idea for the latest challenge — to compose a fan letter from one well-known person from the field of fact or fiction to another — came from a letter written by Kirk Douglas to Gary Cooper, received just days before Cooper died of cancer, in which Douglas reflects on the impossibility of complying with a director’s request to ‘play this the way Gary Cooper would’: ‘It sounded easy to me — because I say to myself Coop is a simple man — natural. So I’ll just be natural. Then I learned the big — big lesson. It ain’t easy. My temptation is to ask how the hell have you done it?’ In an enjoyable entry, Frank McDonald’s Lady Macbeth fist-bumps Nicola Sturgeon: ‘My dearest Nicola there is no need/ For me to pour my spirits in thine ear;/ Already you excel me in your lust/ To seize the Scottish crown…’; Ben Hale imagines Emperor Palpatine high-fiving Jean Claude-Juncker: ‘I wanted to express my admiration from afar (very afar) of your skill at knitting together a number of different systems under one central body politic…’; and Sylvia Fairley’s Mrs Malaprop writes admiringly to Dr Roget: ‘I would like to repress my delight at your new fabrication, the stegosaurus…’ David Silverman (René Descartes to the Spice Girls), Rob Stuart (Peppa Pig to Big Brother) and Frank Upton (Ivy Compton-Burnett to Edgar Rice Burroughs) were also strong performers, but the five printed below emerged as the winners, and are rewarded with £30 each.

Chris O’Carroll My dear Mr Milne (may I call you A.