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.