Sir: For the last two months, the New Statesman literary competitions have been repeats of competitions held in the 1950s. I entered all of these competitions at first time of asking and, never having been successful, feel reluctant to try again when my perfectly good efforts sit on file with yourselves. My poem about Sir Stafford Cripps, for example, would come up fresh as paint today, its pithy sideswipe at fiscal tightening as relevant now as it wasn't quite when first submitted in 1954.
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