<\/p>\n
THE TWENTY-FIFTH KING\u2019S ENGLISH SOCIETY PRIZE FOR EXCELLENT ENGLISH<\/strong><\/p>\n The twenty-fifth Prize for Excellent English covered material published in 2021.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Joint Winners<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Kathy Lette <\/strong>for Dear daughter, you can take me away any time\u2026. <\/strong>The Sunday Telegraph Travel Section<\/em>, 14\/3\/2021.<\/p>\n The humour and philosophy are superb throughout, with a terrific first paragraph.<\/p>\n Teenagers are God\u2019s punishment for having sex in the first place. Living with a teenage daughter is like living with the Taliban; mothers aren\u2019t allowed to dance, sing, flirt, laugh<\/em> or wear short skirts. When my daughter, Georgie, was 13, I was sashaying toward the front door in high heels when she stormed after me, exclaiming, \u201cWhat are you wearing? You are not going out like that. Go back to your room and change immediately!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 Ouch. I wilted like day-old salad. Low self-esteem is hereditary \u2013 you get it from your teenage daughters.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 A mother delivers her child once vaginally, but then by car forever afterwards.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 Kids can be a great comfort in your old age, but they sure as hell make you reach it faster, too. Especially teenage girls taken hostage by their hormones. But, despite the exhaustion that comes with supervising digital detoxes, discouraging tattoos, side-boobs, piercings and the perception that <\/em>Love Island contestants are role models, we mums love our progeny unconditionally.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Roger Lewis<\/strong> for Oozing and palely loitering<\/strong>. The Daily Telegraph<\/em>, 6\/2\/2021.<\/p>\n This is a witty, scathing demolition-job in which the reviewer pillories the author for her hapless choice of banalities in pursuit of easy familiarity with the reader. The opening paragraphs are typical.<\/p>\n Situated for two centuries in the icy silence of his tomb, in the Cimitero Acattolico, Rome, John Keats at least hasn\u2019t had to confront the Keatsians \u2013 the scholars, academics and other buffoons who have published books and papers about <\/em>Keats\u2019 Post-Newtonian Poetics, The Etymology of Porphryo\u2019s Name, The Dying Keats: A Case for Euthanasia?, and, not forgetting,<\/em> Keats, Modesty and Masturbation.<\/p>\n Now comes Lucasta Miller\u2019s Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph <\/strong>(Jonathan Cape, \u00a317.99), which is one big farrago of clich\u00e9, jargon, mixed metaphor and general sloppiness. Page upon page is filled with phrases like under the skin, scruff of the neck, strapped for cash, cocked a snook, one fell swoop, punches far above the weight. Ad infinitum\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 His romantic imagination, we are vouchsafed, was \u201celastic, winged, capricious\u201d, which conjures in my mind a picture of Ena Sharples\u2019s knickers.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 I also wonder why Miller has taken Keats as her subject, as she is worried that he is already \u201ccanonised as a dead white European male\u201d, which implies that only live black or Asian women are truly morally upright, possess fortitude and humility, and hence are permitted a voice.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Four other finalists, in random order<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nikki Haley<\/strong> for We could use some of Thatcher\u2019s confidence and conviction. <\/strong>The Daily Telegraph<\/em>, 6\/11\/2021. This is a brilliant and persuasive exposition of why capitalism has done and is doing wonders throughout the world. Her opening is sharp, eloquent and sums up her theme in a few words. It is a stirring political tour-de-force with fired-up rhetoric and sustained logical arguments in very clear English.<\/p>\n Capitalism is the greatest driver of prosperity and destroyer of poverty in history. It\u2019s the single best way to help families, boost wages, create jobs, and discover the breakthroughs that improve all our lives. <\/em><\/p>\n \u2026The Right must recapture its passion for economic freedom. It\u2019s the only way to stop the socialist wave crashing over our country. Inspiring leaders show the way.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 Democrats are on the verge of creating the first cradle-to-grave welfare state in US history; a country where dependency is the default. It\u2019s a guaranteed recipe for national decline.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 It\u2019s time to face the truth: Spending trillions of dollars won\u2019t solve our problems. Spending trillions of dollars is the problem.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 We need to describe what capitalism has done \u2013 namely, lifting more people out of poverty than anything else in human history. Economic freedom has doubled American life expectancy from 40 to 80. It has cut infant mortality from a third of children to practically none. <\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 America is not rotten. America is not racist. Freedom and the rule of law<\/em> are not tools of oppression. They are essential to providing opportunity for all.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Allison Pearson <\/strong>for The Church of England is abandoning its flock. <\/strong>The Daily Telegraph <\/em>14\/7\/2021.<\/p>\n She argues well on an important topic, with good rhetorical devices and a great build-up of rage within paragraphs.<\/p>\n \u2026 Having lost faith in the eternal verities, the CofE now makes stipendiary clergy redundant \u2013 some rural benefices of 10 churches have to share one vicar! \u2013 while lunging for relevance with lectures like the one immortally entitled \u201cThe Church and the Clitoris\u201d. Er, it\u2019s been a while since I was a Sunday school teacher but isn\u2019t the G in \u201cG-spot\u201d supposed to stand for God?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 The new \u201cgrowth strategy\u201d is called Myriad. It means getting rid of the clergy with their tedious theological knowledge about, you know, the Bible.<\/em><\/p>\n Flog the vicarages! Abandon the churches, centre of our communities for centuries and a beloved part of the spiritual geography of these islands! Dispense with those annoying old parishioners \u2013 the ghastly people probably vote Tory anyway! <\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 Apparently, there is no easy way for sacking bishops, even ones who despise half their congregation. How terribly convenient. Make no mistake, the Church is abandoning its flock and expects to get away with it.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Ariella Budick <\/strong>for Drawn to darkness and light. <\/strong>Financial Times<\/em> \u2018Life and Art\u2019, 19-20\/6\/2021.<\/p>\n This is a well-written review of a show of Cezanne\u2019s drawings, showing insight into the artist\u2019s personality and versatility. There are good descriptions and turns of phrase.<\/p>\n In the dim light of a drawing gallery at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, C\u00e9zanne\u2019s jagged strokes flicker and twist, refusing to cohere. <\/em>\u201cThere is no line,\u201d the artist insisted and he avoided defining contours or marking out boundaries between substance and air. A bather\u2019s leg dissolves in a nest of twigs. A melon on a table quivers with pleasure or dread. The cumulative effect is electrifying.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 He was gripped by apples, obsessed with a specific mountain, bedevilled by bevies of nudes. With a mixture of fervour and labour, he produced sheaves of doodles, cramming dozens of separate drawings on to a single page that he sometimes kept working on for many years. <\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 Bloodthirstiness was never far from Cezanne\u2019s imagination, even though he later buried it beneath veneers of peel or rind. In \u201cStill Life With Apples, Pears and a Pot\u201d (1900), the handle of a blue-black knife hovers menacingly above the carnal cleft of blushing pears. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Tom Chivers <\/strong>for London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City. <\/strong>London: Doubleday, 2021, starting at page 208.<\/p>\n This is well-researched and well-written book, presenting many interesting facts in an easily digested form. This chapter starts with an excellent paragraph about rain.<\/p>\n The rain begins at midday and doesn\u2019t stop till after nightfall. At first it\u2019s a gusty mizzle, then torrential, monsoon-heavy, soak-to-the-skin. On a day like this, I\u2019m finding lost rivers everywhere. They bubble up between paving slabs, gurgle from raging manholes, pool in the gutters. They run down my waterproof jacket and into my shoes, persistent rills of rainwater from London\u2019s toxic skies. <\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 Around the turn of the twelfth century, de Mandeville donated the manor to the Abbey, a down payment on eternal salvation.<\/em><\/p>\n I fold up the Streetfinder and wedge it between the Sullivans. Bits of map keep falling off and working their way to the bottom of my rucksack, to the place where biros go to die.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 Could this be a lost river, hiding in plain sight in the streets of Pimlico? Or a culvert from the draining of the marsh? A dog goes sniffing at my leg, a bull terrier with an eye patch.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026 Language is like a rock; it comes in many forms. Some can be eroded, chipped away, others changed by heat and pressure. Here language is durable as diamond. A millennium has passed and yet this name, Longmore, persists.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE TWENTY-FIFTH KING\u2019S ENGLISH SOCIETY PRIZE FOR EXCELLENT ENGLISH The twenty-fifth Prize for Excellent English covered material published in 2021. The Joint Winners Kathy Lette for Dear daughter, you can take me away any time\u2026. The Sunday Telegraph Travel Section, 14\/3\/2021. The humour and philosophy are superb throughout, with a terrific first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excellent-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"yoast_head":"\n