Intimate congress

Then she pounced, like a sea-eagle on a basking pilchard.

Oh, I say. Good grief. Just think of it. Are your eyes watering? Teeth and arse-cheeks clenched? Well, quite. I mean to say. Talons are involved here. Talons.

Thus does W J Webster, in persona Wooster, pay homage to the great Wodehouse in the Spectator's competition of 7th August. The task was to write a bedroom scene in the manner of 'a novelist who would not normally venture into such territory'.

The merciless Mr Webster came second to Chris O'Carroll whose depiction of Darcy and Elizabeth getting it, as they say, on, has coloured permanently my reading of the great lady's magnum opus.