In Competition No. 3338 you were invited to submit an essay on the topic of evolution in the style of the writer of your choice.

In a top-notch entry, Basil Ransome-Davies’s twist on Larkin’s ‘Annus Mirabilis’, Janine Beacham’s Edgar Allan Poe and Russell Chamberlain’s imagining of Kipling’s final Just So story, How Every Creature Got All Its Characteristics, earn honourable mentions:

I have pondered in times numerous, as via fossils, skull to humerus,
how our ancestors developed through six million years or more –
and agreed with the solution, as per Darwin, evolution;
thus, the change from apelike primates to bipedal I’ll explore.
’Tis