Competition | 5 March 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition

In Competition No. 2686 you were invited to submit a love letter from one fictional character to another. An entertaining postbag included this endearingly cack-handed overture from Bridget Jones to Rochester: ‘the word is you are sex on legs, and I’ve been rather short in that department lately. Well, for a bloody long time. Ever get depressed and want to do tons of smoking, drinking and comfort eating?’ (Basil Ransome-Davies). And this touching attempt by Long John Silver to woo Miss Havisham: ‘Though ’tis true there be as many women as fish in the sea, there’s none matchin’ you, nor another as stirs up such great expectations in me.’ (Alan Millard). Noel Petty, Adrian Fry and Margaret Howell were also on fine form. It’s £25 to the winners, printed below, and £30 to W.J. Webster.

Tristram Shandy’s Uncle Toby to Mrs Malaprop

 As you know, dear lady, I am but a simple military man. Of military things — of sieges and ambuscades, of bastions and ravelins — I can speak with some confidence. But in softer matters my tongue ofttimes seems tied. How I admire your eloquence! When you dubbed me your ‘faithful Roman centenarian’ I blushed with pleasure at the compliment and with shame at my ignorance of the term. By joining such rare knowledge with yet rarer goodness of heart in such a comely frame you might capture any man’s deepest redoubt. My own heart is a poor, patched thing. It has seen service in the field. I will say no more. But I make bold to claim it is an honest heart and true. And it is yours, wholly, now and for so long as it may beat.