Lucy Vickery

To mark the 70th anniversary of George Orwell’s death, you were invited to submit a short story with an Orwellian flavour. This challenge was inspired by an entertaining thread on Twitter started by @rcolvile who asked for ideas for sequels or spin-offs when Orwell’s work goes out of copyright next January. Among the suggestions that elicited the most ‘likes’ were @NickTyrone’s ‘a sequel to Animal Farm in which all the non-pig animals console themselves with the idea that at least they “won the argument”.’ An honourable mention goes to Nick MacKinnon, whose twist on Nineteen Eight-Four sees Winston consigned to a Room 101 that is the embodiment of his greatest horror, native English culture: ‘a Wetherspoons.

The latest competition asked for application letters for a job at No. 10 from a fictional character of your choice. This challenge was inspired by the PM’s chief special adviser Dominic Cummings’s suggestion, in a recruitment ad, that the ideal candidate for one of the positions on offer might resemble ‘weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand “diviner” who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger’. The parade of hopeful candidates, in an entry that was competent if somewhat predictable, included George Smiley, Gregor Samsa, Bertie Wooster and Toad of Toad Hall, all of whom were pipped to the post by the winners below who snaffle £25 each. Adrian Fry/Holden CaulfieldAll resumes are phoney.

The latest competition asked for poems featuring one of T.S. Eliot’s practical cats getting to grips with the modern world. Your 21st-century reincarnations of Eliot’s felines (the poems were originally published in 1939 and inspired by the poet’s four-year-old godson, who invented the words ‘pollicle’ for dogs and ‘jellicle’ for cats) were terrific, making it especially difficult to decide on the winners. Some fine Macavitys narrowly missed the cut (take a bow, Nick Syrett, David Shields and Hamish Wilson), as did Bill Greenwell’s Jellicles and Brian Allgar’s Growltiger, the Tory Cat. This week’s top cats are printed below and pocket £35 each.

Your latest challenge was to provide a passage about food written in the style of a well-known author. One of my favourite literary meals is in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. Here is the novel’s protagonist, the Falstaffian Ignatius J. Reilly, sizing up a mid-afternoon snack: ‘In the boiling water the hot dogs swished and lashed like artificially coloured and magnified paramecia. Ignatius filled his lungs with the pungent, sour aroma. “I shall pretend that I am in a smart restaurant and that this is the lobster pond.”’ In a large and wide-ranging entry, Douglas G.

Your latest challenge was to submit an extract from one of the following books: Noah Gets Naked: Bible Stories They Didn’t Teach You at Sunday School; Ending the War on Artisan Cheese; The Joy of Waterboiling; Versailles: The View from Sweden. These genuine titles have all been contenders for the annual Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, an award invented in 1978 by Bruce Robinson and Trevor Bounford to relieve the tedium of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Joy of Waterboiling — a German-language guide to cooking meals in a kettle — scooped the gong in 2018 and proved to be top choice with competitors too, followed closely by Versailles: The View from Sweden. David Silverman, Martyn Hurst, Katie Mallett and Rebecca Pyne earn honourable mentions.

The latest challenge, to submit a poem beginning ‘Yes. I remember…’, was suggested by a reader who was very taken with Adrian Bailey’s poem ‘First Love’, a clever riff on Edward Thomas’s much-loved ‘Adlestrop’, published recently in this magazine. The winners, in an entry that provided a bracing blast of new year nostalgia, earn £25 each. D.A. Prince Yes, I remember Germolene — the densely-pink tinned-salmon hue, its smell, round tin, unwonted gloss like warm and antiseptic glue. It soothed each graze from roller skates. Those tumbles from the playground swings? — anaesthetised. It smelt of care, did Germolene. And other things.