Sometimes described as the
literate cousin of the Limerick, the Clerihew has attracted and inspired
writers from GK Chesterton and Gavin Ewart to Craig Brown. WH Auden once wrote
an entire book of Clerihews. Invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956),
the Clerihew is a childish anti-panegyric, flat-footed, Hudibrastic, eponymous quatrains
designed to lower the tone and cut everyone down to size. The Call of the
Clerihew brings together fifty contemporary exponents of this ridiculous
form, including Ian Duhig, WN Herbert, Jacqueline Saphra, Martin Rowson, Katy
Evans-Bush, Michael Rosen and Tim Turnbull, cocking a snook at the great and the
good, the important and the self-important, the religious and the royal,
despots and detectives, poets, philosophers and politicians.