Spectator competition winners: ‘It’s no go the continent, it’s no go the Riviera…’ Poems about Thomas Cook

The latest challenge, a mournful nod to the recently defunct 178-year-old travel company, called for poems about Thomas Cook. The firm may have hit the buffers, but many entries featured its eponymous founder’s original offering — railway travel and Temperance tours — which would be just the job in our clean-living, climate change-challenged times. In a large and excellent crop, which had echoes of Keats, Kipling, MacNeice and Thomas Hood, the six below stood out and earn their authors £25.

Basil Ransome-Davies James Cook explored, and met the end Lèse-majesté procures, But Thomas Cook began the trend For organising tours.

He was dynamic, fired with hope, And thus the business boomed, Though nonetheless its moral scope Was tragically foredoomed.

They started out as Temperance jaunts, Those earnest early treks. Now low, disreputable haunts Draw mobs for drink and sex.

That Spanish coast which once for some Was vividly romantic Is foreign-Yahoo playground from Cebère to the Atlantic.

Sylvia Fairley When Thomas laid on special trains for groups who spurned the demon drink he said, ‘there must be greater gains, the world’s my oyster, now I think I’ll take more people for a ride’ — he saw a chance and so he took it, ‘here’s to tourism,’ he cried, then said, ‘don’t book it, Thomas Cook it.’

With happy hols, the profits rose, no hint of hopes that would be dashed, but when old Tom turned up his toes the firm was sold; in time it crashed.