Spectator competition: write a poetic short story (plus: Philip Larkin’s version of Humpty-Dumpty)

The invitation to recast a nursery rhyme in the style of a well-known author attracted a large and lively entry that was evenly split between prose and poetry. In general, verse worked better, as reflected in the winning line-up below. (G.K. Chesterton did ‘Old King Cole’ as written by Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Swinburne and Yeats, so you were in stellar company with this week’s task.) Commendations go to Chris Port, Mike Morrison, Max Ross, Nick MacKinnon, Adrian Fry and Mark Shelton. Here’s a taste of Mr Fry’s ‘There Was an Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe’ as Alan Bennett might have done it:

‘This being Sheffield before the proper provision of social housing, it was less this unusual accommodation that fascinated — a tan brogue, I recall — than her inability, as social workers now insist on understating the condition, to cope.’

The winners earn £25 each. Chris O’Carroll takes £30.

Chris O’Carroll/Edgar Allan Poe Once upon a sturdy tuffet sat a maid         the world calls Muffet, Dining on a wholesome bowl of dairy         oddments, curds with whey.