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.