The Spectator‘s correspondent Lucy Vickery has set a competition for writing a short message in the style of one of four writers suggested by Michael Gove, Secretary of State, formerly for Education and now for Justice, as models for civil servants. Here are the rules:
No. 2909: Taking the Michael
Michael Gove has urged civil servants to take inspiration from George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen and George Eliot when writing correspondence. But which well-known writer would you like to see Whitehall bureaucrats take their lead from? You are invited to submit a memo generated by either the Department of Education or the Ministry of Justice as it might have been written by that writer. Please email entries (150 words maximum) to (click to email) by 29 July.
NOTE (6 August 2015): The winners of the competition were published in the Spectator’s 8 August edition. None parodied Waugh, although there was a parody of P.G.Wodehouse writing from the Ministry of Justice, of which Waugh would, no doubt, have approved.
