Spectator competition winners: Lady Chatterley’s Over and other novel titles with a letter removed

In Competition No. 3301, you were invited to delete one letter in the title of a well-known novel and provide an extract from the new work.

This one pulled in the punters. Highlights included Russell Chamberlain’s All the Pretty Hoses and Ralph Bateman’s Bleak Hose:‘Water everywhere. Water up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; water down the river, where it rolls defiled by untreated sewage. It was the wettest of times, it was the driest of times, it was a time of floods, it was a time of drought, it was the age of incompetence…’. There were also entertaining twists on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which saw Winston Smith transported back to the Roman Empire.

But in another fiercely contested week, these excellent offerings were elbowed out of the winning line-up by the entries printed below, which earn their authors £30 each.

To Stank, a Wiltshire hamlet, to officiate at a Tribunal Witchfinder Praisegood hath convened in pursuance of a coven thereabouts.