Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 3111 you were invited to submit William Topaz McGonagall’s poetic response to Magaluf.   The Tayside Tragedian was much taken with the town of Torquay, and wrote a poem singing its praises. But what would he have made of Shagaluf? He took a dim view of alcohol, if these lines are anything

In Competition No. 3110 you were invited to provide a version of the hokey-cokey filtered through the pen of a well-known writer.   Thanks to George Simmers and C. Paul Evans, I now know that doing the hokey–cokey — said by some to have been composed by Puritans in the 18th century to mock the

In Competition No. 3109 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The Last Bumble Bee’. The buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, was once voted Britain’s favourite insect, and this challenge seemed to strike a chord, inspiring stories that ranged from the topical to visions of a near-future of drone pollinators and enforced entomophagy. The

In Competition No. 3108 you were invited to submit a sonnet with the following end rhymes: son, mire, fire, won, run, re-inspire, attire, spun, choice, rise, voice, air, spare, unwise. The end rhymes are taken from Milton’s Sonnet 20, ‘Lawrence of virtuous father virtuous son’. Milton was the most political of poets, and many of

In Competition No. 3107 you were invited to provide an extract that is a mash-up of two well-known works of literature. The germ for this challenge was the discovery that Middlemarch was originally two separate works — a novel about the townspeople (the Vincys, Bulstrode, etc) and a short story called ‘Miss Brooke’, which focused

In Competition No. 3106 you were invited to submit a poem with an ingenious twist at the end. This challenge, a popular one, was deceptively tricky and while there were many accomplished and enjoyable entries, none of your twists truly blew my socks off. Douglas G. Brown, Max Gutmann and Martin Elster were unlucky runners-up.

In Competition No. 3105 you were ­invited to submit a fragment of commentary on the Women’s World Cup delivered by a figure from the world of fact or fiction, dead or alive.  From Joseph Houlihan’s William Mc­Gonagall, who chronicles the ­Scottish team’s defeat at the boots of the Auld Enemy, to R.M. Goddard’s Samuel Beckett

In Competition No. 3104 you were invited to encapsulate the life story of a well-known person, living or dead, in three limericks.   The limerick form was neatly summed up by the late Paul Griffin, long-time competitor and a regular winner on these pages:   A limerick’s short and it’s slick; Like a racehorse it

In Competition No. 3103 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy delivered by one of the contenders for the Tory leadership in which they consider their pitch for the top job. Though many chose to plug the gap created by Boris Johnson’s public reticence, there was a sprinkling of his fellow hopefuls. Most are

In Competition No. 3102 you were invited to submit a fan letter from one well-known person from the field of fact or fiction to another.   Frank McDonald’s Lady Macbeth fist-bumps Nicola Sturgeon: ‘My dearest Nicola there is no need/ For me to pour my spirits in thine ear;/ Already you excel me in your