Spectator competition: pogonophobe or pogonophile? (plus: lines on heaven and hell)

The beard has come a long way since the dark days of Mr Twit, Jimmy Hill and The Joy of Sex. As Ekow Eshun points out in his insightful essay ‘Welcome to Beardlandia’, the bewhiskered chin will one day come to stand as ‘the definitive visual shorthand for the early 21st century, as the moustache is for the Seventies and a pair of mutton chops for Regency England’.