Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: If Shakespeare had been an estate agent

The latest competition called for estate agents’ details in the style of a well-known author. Highlights, in a cracking entry, included Jeremy Carlisle’s Hemingway: ‘Who needs a house? Certainly no real man known to this agency. Cabin by lakeside for sale… A cabin of strong oak-framed construction. The timbers are as honest and straight as the men who worked them…’; Bill Greenwell’s Harold Pinter: ‘I mean, if you want cosy, I can do you cosy. Cosy. Bijou with all the trimmings, no word of a lie…’; Frank McDonald’s Oscar Wilde: ‘Here is security wrapped in splendour, with all the intoxication of alcohol. There is nothing to declare about the architect but his genius.’ And Rachael Churchill’s Ogden Nash: ‘Surrounding the house is a wooden deck,/ Which is ideal for al fresco dining, or hosting an outdoor discotheque…’ And I could happily move in to Tennyson’s Camelot (Max Ross), Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (Hugh King) or Coleridge’s Pleasure-dome (Julie Steiner).

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