Spectator competition winners: what is Englishness?

The call for poems about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet produced a mostly predictable line-up — from Chesterton, so-called ‘prophet of Brexit’, through Larkin, Betjeman, Brooke, Housman and, of course, Kipling. But it was an American, Ogden Nash, whose pen portrait of us prompted me to set this challenge:

Let us pause to consider the English Who when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently thrilled and tinglish, Because every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is…

Philip Machin, Joseph Houlihan and Hugh King caught my eye but were outstripped, in a field where the mood ranged from elegiac to caustic, by the winners below, who each earn £25.

David Silverman/Rudyard Kipling If you can take control back of your border And sing of Agincourt and Waterloo And think your mates are all well out of order To lose their jobs and blame it all on you; If you can moan and never tire of moaning: Your belt won’t fit; your neighbour’s on the fiddle; The trains are late; the Nanny State; it’s raining; You can’t squeeze through the aisle of a Lidl; And Brexit’s got you hot under the collar; You can’t get Heinz baked beans in Magaluf; And there’s no Burger King in Fuengirola; The price of curry’s going through the roof.