Spectator Competition: The secret is…
Competition 3453 invited you to describe a new, infallible personal regime that promised to make one healthy, rich and irresistible.…
Spectator Competition: All kicking off
Competition 3452 invited you to write an ode to the World Cup. The entries flew in and many of them…
Spectator Competition: Shrink away
Comp. 3449 invited you to psychoanalyse, in the manner of Freud/Jung etc, a 2026 phenomenon. In a small but accomplished…
Spectator Competition: Ouch
Competition 3447 invited you to outdo Kingsley Amis in detailing a hang-over from hell, but in the style of another…
Spectator Competition: Critics amass
Comp. 3446 invited you to write a critic’s review of a fictional pub or restaurant or hotel etc. I bit…
Spectator Competition: Take heed
Comp. 3444 invited you to submit a Hilaire Belloc-style cautionary tale for our times. This one was last set in…
Spectator Competition: Punning wild
Comp. 3443 was inspired by Brian Bilston’s ‘Remembrance of Things Pasta’ which begins: She blew her fusilli, my pretty penne,…
Spectator Competition: Budding poets
Comp. 3441 invited you to use the opening of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Trees’ as a starting point for your own.…
Spectator Competition: Hope stings
Competition 3438 was inspired by the 1986 film Clockwise, in which John Cleese is constantly impeded in his attempt to…
Spectator Competition: Wintry look
Competition 3437 invited you to submit a passage or poem incorporating the line ‘Why, what’s the matter, That you have…
Spectator Competition: Veg out
Competition 3435 invited you to write a poem that included Wendy Cope’s immortal line ‘A happier cabbage you never did…
Spectator Competition: I’ll take Manhattan
Competition 3434 was prompted by the 400th anniversary of the retrospectively controversial purchase of Manhattan island by the Dutchman Peter…
Spectator Competition: Alternative facts
Competition 3432 invited you to submit a passage containing some AI-style ‘hallucinations’ (it would be just as anthropomorphic to call…
Spectator Competition: Write Christmas
Competition 3429 invited you to tell the story of the Nativity in the style of a well-known writer. There were…
Spectator Competition: Frankenpoem
Comp. 3428 was inspired by Rose Ruane’s Larkin/Shelley mash-up (many thanks to Bill Greenwell for flagging this up): They Oz…
Spectator Competition: A letter from Jane
Competition 3425 was prompted by Gill Hornby, a biographer of Jane Austen, telling an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival…
Spectator Competition: Bad advice
Comp. 3423 invited you to submit a passage about a command or suggestion from literature being taken too literally. I…
Spectator Competition: Daylight saving
For Competition 3422 you were invited to submit a poem or passage on the theme of ‘daylight saving’. In a…
Spectator Competition: Virtue-signalling
For Competition 3420 you were invited to submit a poem or short story incorporating that sentence of Emerson’s: ‘The louder…
Spectator Competition: what day is it?
For Comp 3419 you were invited to write a poem to mark National Vodka Day (4 October) or another spurious…
Spectator Competition: Forget me not
Comp. 3417 invited you to write an elegy to a piece of obsolete technology. This prompted a deluge of very…
Spectator Competition: Throuple
Comp. 3416 invited you to marry romantasy (the romance-fantasy fusion now dominating fiction sales) with a third genre. Narnia, gritty…
Spectator Competition: Category error
Comp. 3413 was prompted by J.G. Ballard’s story ‘The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race’…
Spectator Competition: Popular demand
For Comp. 3411 you were invited to submit a passage or poem on the subject of dynamic pricing. Thanks to…
