Spectator competition winners: Resignation letters (Anna Soubry channels Virginia Woolf)

The latest challenge, to cook up a resignation letter in the style of a well-known author, was inspired by the great William Faulkner, who bowed out with panache – and uncharacteristic brevity – from his job as University of Mississippi postmaster:

‘…I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.’

Some entries were resignation letters on the part of the author in whose style they were written; others were written by well-known figures in the style of a given author. Given my somewhat woolly brief, either approach was permissible. Submissions ranged from the long-winded (David Shields’s Henry James):

My (if, as I trust, I may continue to employ, with its connotations of possession, not to say — although by that very choice of expression the act of saying is, of course adumbrated — consanguinity, that term) Dear (for indeed the affection that has hitherto characterized our relations has undergone, as far, at least, as I am concerned, no diminution) Prime Minister…

to the pithy Nicholas Stone’s Edmund Clerihew Bentley: