In Competition No. 2540 you were invited to take a historical event and submit a newspaper leader on it in the style of either the Guardian, the Daily Mail or the Sun.
There are some richly comic examples of the art of red-top headline writing in John Perry’s and Neil Roberts’s Hold Ye Front Page, a Sun-style romp through two millennia of history which features some spectacular punning. Highlights include: ‘Nazi Piece of Work’; ‘The Joy of Six’ (Henry VIII); ‘Napoleon Blown Apart’; and ‘You Canute be Serious’. And as far as share of entry was concerned it was the Sun wot won it, outnumbering the Mail and Guardian by two to one submissions. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. Brian Murdoch pockets the extra fiver.
The Sun Says enough is enough!
Year on year we’ve had to put up with waves of immigrants. If it’s not Angles, it’s Saxons, and if it’s not Saxons, it’s Jutes.
And what will these Woden-worshippers do to the British way of life? They even want to impose their own language! And the wishy-washy liberals in some of the new-fangled monasteries are actually writing things down in Anglo-Saxon for them. Brythonic was good enough for the Druids and it should be good enough for them.
The old Romans weren’t too bad. At least they were decent plumbers.
But Britain is a small island. How many sheep and how much cabbage will this lot gobble up? The wishy-washies tell us it’s all just a ‘Folk Migration’. Well, Hengist and Horsa, the Sun has a simple message for you, and it is this: you can Folk Off!
Brian Murdoch
We’ve nothing against foreigners but when they come calling with spears and arrows, the Sun draws the line. It’s our silver and tin they want and our cattle and our wives and children. We’ve this message for Rome —– we’re not buying what you’re selling.
Festinate off! Caesar might be a big geezer in Gaul but we Brits are made of tougher stuff. Our lads were looking over the white cliffs of Dover to issue a defiant message to the Roman pansies disembarking from their posh ships. It’s our Deal! Manus off! Mess with us and you’ll go back to Rome with your togas in tatters. The Sun confidently predicts they won’t stay long. If our women don’t beat them, our weather will. And does anyone out there really believe we’ll start liking Italian food? Nulla via, as the bullies from abroad would say.
Frank McDonald
It was a case of madness gone politically correct yesterday when Emperor Caligula appointed his favourite horse to the Senate.
Nay-sayers were confounded by the neigh sayer as the animal made his — and our — feelings abundantly clear by defecating on the floor of this once august institution. While Caligula has added to the gaiety of the nation, upholding family values by taking his sister as a consort, boosting belief in God by appointing himself one and opening the palace as a brothel in a bid to combat obesity, our Senators have done nothing but stand on the sidelines and talk. We must conclude, as the Emperor has, that the time has come for a Senator who can’t.
With the vote on Caligula’s War on Poseidon imminent, it’s good to know that royal prerogative has been asserted and that there is at least one Senator for whom being reined in comes naturally.
Adrian Fry
Violence as the mechanism of régime change is not unprecedented in Roman history and we should beware of treating Caesar’s death as a unique atrocity. This is not to condone assassination, only to view it in the context of a dynamic political culture, i.e., as shocking but not aberrant. Naturally there will be finger-pointing, and it seems inevitable that Brutus, Cassius and their associates will fall under suspicion. At least one eye-witness has spoken of a ‘mobhanded’ assault. However, any rush to judgment fuelled by intemperate passions would only further jeopardise Rome’s hard-won stability. The same goes for Antony’s mind games (he is reported to have read Caesar’s will as a ‘posthumous bribe’). Ego and ideology have made the present situation fraught, open to extremists, and one must hope that the contending factions will quickly sink their differences to avert civil war, pending a public inquiry.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Heston Aerodrome may not look much, but it will be famed in history as the place where world peace was announced.
Make no mistake. When Mr Chamberlain said ‘peace for our time’ last night he meant it. And only a dimwit would question a man who talked Hitler into backing down while fending off the bleating Czechs.
Let’s face it, until 20 years ago Czechoslovakia was just an outpost of a rotting empire. Now it wants to stir up trouble between Britain and Germany.
Don’t be fooled by the innocent pose.
We know what the carpers and critics will say: Hitler has made promises before and broken them.
True. But he didn’t make them in writing to a British Prime Minister.
And if there’s one thing the Führer fears more than a ruthless worldwide Jewish conspiracy it’s the British lion’s roar.
The Sun says: good on yer, Nev!
G.M. Davis
The fire which started yesterday in one of London’s rapidly expanding fast-food outlets is now under control, and insurers are counting the cost. While the majority of Britain is unaffected by — and indifferent to — this event as just another item of London-centred news, we should not remain blinkered to its wider impact. Pollution and reduction in air quality, particularly affecting women and children, have long-term effects detrimental to health and learning abilities. The impact on domestic insurance policies is unknown, as yet, but a hike in prices is certain for all of us. The effect on the upper atmosphere of sustained high temperatures, plus increased distribution of lead-tainted particulates, will be viewed with alarm by scientists worldwide, especially those measuring the extent of global warming. At local level, the destruction of London’s only breeding colony of greater crested newts is a reminder of the planet’s vulnerability.
D.A Prince
Competition No. 2543: A to P
You are invited to submit a poem about the things people need to live on in which the first letter of each line spells out the first 16 letters of the alphabet. Entries to ‘Competition 2543’ by 1 May or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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