Quiz 23

Question 1

Which British Labour politician once defined his foreign policy as being able to take a ticket at Victoria Station and go anywhere I damn well please?

Answer 1

Ernest Bevin

Question 2

In which field of the arts is the Prix Goncourt awarded?

Answer 2

Literature

Question 3

The Scottish football club long known simply as Morton Football Club now acknowledges its home town in its name: which town?

Answer 3

Greenock

Question 4

What is the British term for what an American would call a Plantar Wart?

Answer 4

Verucca

Question 5

Warren Casey and Jim Jacobs were the writers of a stage musical first performed in 1971 which became one of the most performed musicals in the world, especially in schools. What is it called?

Answer 5

Grease

Question 6

Which small animal, brought to Europe from South America where is was domesticated for its meat, has been used since the mid 18th century in scientific research, being Robert Koch’s chosen model in experiments that produced the first TB vaccine?

Answer 6

Guinea pigs

Question 7

Which rank of the British Army, awarded to junior officers in cavalry regiments, shares its name with a brass band instrument commonly pitched in b flat?

Answer 7

Cornet

Question 8

Wittern, whitty, wiggen and quickbeam are all dialect names for which species of tree?

Answer 8

Rowan, or Mountain Ash

Question 9

What is the motto of the Salvation Army?

Answer 9

Blood and fire

Question 10

Which novel by Robert Graves did Alexander Korda attempt to film in 1937, with Charles Laughton in the title role, although the project was abandoned after a few weeks shooting?

Answer 10

I Claudius

Question 11

The signing of which treaty in 1902 ended the Second Boer War?

Answer 11

Vereeniging

Question 12

Which Greek word, meaning union, refers to the proposed union of the island of Cyprus and Greece?

Answer 12

Enosis

Question 13

Which American musician, who remained unaware for decades that his records had made him a huge star in South Africa, was the subject of the 2012 documentary film Searching For Sugar Man?

Answer 13

Sixto Rodriguez

Question 14

Which British reservoir was created in the 1970s by damming the river Gwash?

Answer 14

Rutland Water

Question 15

In the original 1982 book by Sue Townsend, how old specifically was Adrian Mole?

Answer 15

13 3/4

Question 16

Which Canadian prairie province lies between Ontario to the east and Saskatchewan to the west?

Answer 16

Manitoba

Question 17

Blacksmith is a general term for a worker in iron, but what specific name is given to someone who shoes horses?

Answer 17

Farrier

Question 18

In jazz, what adopted forename is common to the drummer and bandleader born William Henry Webb and the pianist whose real name is Armando Corea?

Answer 18

Chick

Question 19

Hippoglossus hippoglossus is the Latin name for which common flatfish found in the North Atlantic?

Answer 19

Halibut

Question 20

Which town on the River Tweed has a ruined Cistercian abbey that is supposedly the burial place of the heart, though not the rest of the remains, of Robert the Bruce?

Answer 20

Melrose Abbey

Question 21

In the 1400s, John Holland, Duke of Exeter, became Constable of the Tower of London. What instrument of torture is he credited with introducing there?

Answer 21

The rack

Question 22

Which term, coined by Ludwig von Rochau in the 19th century describes pragmatic politics based on material needs rather than moral ideals?

Answer 22

Realpolitik

Question 23

The Eastern European city known in German as Laibach is more widely known by what name?

Answer 23

Ljubljana

Question 24

The 15th century Chateau des Milandes in the Dordogne region of France was the home from the 1940s onward of which American singer and dancer, also prominent in the civil rights movement?

Answer 24

Josephine Baker

Question 25

Who wrote the short story on which the much-admired film The Shawshank Redemption was based?

Answer 25

Stephen King

Question 26

What is the scientific name for a plant that grows on another, but not parasitic?

Answer 26

Epiphyte

Question 27

Which Italian footballer, the 1993 World and European Player of the Year, was known as the Divine Ponytale?

Answer 27

Roberto Baggio

Question 28

In tectonics, the oceanic plate on the Pacific coastline of South America is named after which ancient culture?

Answer 28

Nazca

Question 29

EP and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley are personae adopted in each of two sections of a long work of 1920, itself named Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, by which American-born poet?

Answer 29

Ezra Pound

Question 30

In legend, Leodegrance, King of Cameliard, is the father of which queen, whose marital infidelity is said to have brought her a life of penitence at an Amesbury nunnery?

Answer 30

Guinevere

Question 31

The conductor Bernard Haitink, a former music director at both Glyndebourne Opera and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, was born in which country?

Answer 31

Netherlands

Question 32

What creature does someone fear if he or she suffers from Ailurophobia?

Answer 32

Cats

Question 33

According to the Beaulieu National Motor Museum, which term should properly be used only to designate those vehicles manufactured between 1919 and 1930?

Answer 33

Vintage

Question 34

Who once wrote of the Holy Roman Empire - to give the standard English translation - “This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire”?

Answer 34

Voltaire

Question 35

Found in tea, nuts, cocoa and spinach, which chemical compound of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen is present at toxic levels in the leaves of the rhubarb plant?

Answer 35

Oxalic acid

Question 36

What is the name of the niche or slab in a Mosque that is used to indicate the direction of Mecca?

Answer 36

Mihrab

Question 37

Can you name both of Bertie Wooster’s aunts who appear regularly in the novels of PG Wodehouse?

Answer 37

Agatha and Dahlia

Question 38

Which London building, demolished in 1902, was known, with great irony, as the City College?

Answer 38

Newgate Prison

Question 39

Paradise Regained, which John Milton published as a sequel to Paradise Lost in 1671, deals with which episode in the New Testament?

Answer 39

The Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness

Question 40

When the first Penguin paperbacks were published, their jackets were colour coded as to subject matter: orange for general fiction, blue for biography. What specific category was covered by the green-coloured paperbacks?

Answer 40

Crime fiction