Quiz 26

Question 1

In which European city are the graves of Igor Stravinsky, Ezra Pound and Sergei Diaghilev?

Answer 1

Venice

Question 2

Goodbye, Farewell, Amen was the title of the last episode of which American TV series?

Answer 2

MASH

Question 3

Which 1959 novel by Gunter Grass, which features Oscar Matzerath, a boy who refuses to grow up, is generally seen as an allegory of Germany throughout its early 20th century history?

Answer 3

The Tin Drum

Question 4

No 1 Carlton Gardens has been whose official residence in London since the 1940s?

Answer 4

Foreign Secretary

Question 5

Who was the first official Poet Laureate, appointed in 1668 and dismisssed for refusing to take the oath of allegiance during the Glorious Revolution?

Answer 5

John Dryden

Question 6

What’s the name of the limestone plateau in the north of County Clare in Ireland, featuring a network of caves and underground waterways as well as prehistoric burial sites, which is also of importance to botanists as one of the most varied plant habitats in the whole of the British Isles?

Answer 6

The Burren

Question 7

The feast of Candlemas occurs on the second day of which month?

Answer 7

February

Question 8

Which figure from South American history gives his name to the currency of Venezuela?

Answer 8

Simon Bolivar

Question 9

Who once said to Anton Chekov: Shakespeare’s plays are bad enough, but yours are even worse?

Answer 9

Tolstoy

Question 10

Whaen making bookings online it is often necessary to enter letters or digits from a distorted image, to ensure that the response is by a human rather than a computer. By what rather contrived acronym is this test known?

Answer 10

Captcha

Question 11

Some thirty years before the much publicised cloning of Dolly the sheep in the late 1990s, the British biologist John Gurdon successfully cloned what type of creature?

Answer 11

Frog

Question 12

Which Labour Government White Paper of 1969 was designed to harmonise labour relations and was issued by Barbara Castle as Secretary of State for Employment?

Answer 12

In Place Of Strife

Question 13

In 2007, which best selling writer was appointed President of the Campaign for Rural England?

Answer 13

Bill Bryson

Question 14

Bluebell, Black Rock, Cuckoo Maran and Araucana are hybrid varieties of which creatures?

Answer 14

Chickens

Question 15

From which port did the Spanish Armada set sail in 1588?

Answer 15

Lisbon

Question 16

Which British crystallographer became, in 1964, the third woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and in 1965 was admitted to the Order of Merit, the first woman to be so honoured since Florence Nightingale?

Answer 16

Dorothy Hodgkin

Question 17

In the only outdoor public statue of him in London, sculted by Francis Bird, which monard is represented about the north gate entrance to St Bart’s Hospital, surmounted by reclining figures symbolising lameness and disease?

Answer 17

Henry VIII

Question 18

Who, collectively, were Denny Doherty, John Phillips, Michelle Phillips and Cass Elliot?

Answer 18

The Mamas and Papas

Question 19

Which Royal palace in West Lothian, begun in the 1420s by James I of Scotland, became in 1542 the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots?

Answer 19

Linlithgow

Question 20

A Goitre is the enlargement of which gland?

Answer 20

Thyroid

Question 21

The South African port which is the largest city of Kwa-Zulu Natal and the name of a fishing village in East Lothian on Scotland’s east coast, popular with tourists, are anagrams. Can you give me the names of both?

Answer 21

Durban and Dunbar

Question 22

The actor Lee Van Kleev is perhaps best known for his role as the Bad in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, but he also made a much earlier sreen appearance as a villain in which classic western of 1952

Answer 22

High Noon

Question 23

Which Royal personage was the subject of the caricature by James Gillray, published in 1792, with the title A Voluptory Under The Horrors Of Digestion?

Answer 23

Prince George

Question 24

When woulf you be likely to hear the sound of a nautophone?

Answer 24

Fog

Question 25

What type of mammal is a klipspringer?

Answer 25

Antelope

Question 26

What is the full correct title of of the body who annually hand out the Oscars?

Answer 26

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists

Question 27

In Wagner’s Ring Cycle of operas, who is the father of the Valkyries?

Answer 27

Wotan

Question 28

Which book’s publication in 1987, and the government’s unsuccessful attempts to suppress it, led to Section 2 of the 1911 Official Secrets Act being replaced under a new 1989 act?

Answer 28

Spycatcher

Question 29

Which instantly recognisable TV characters were originally designed in 1963 by BBC staff member Raymond P Cusick

Answer 29

Daleks

Question 30

Which 20th century British politician was the only one of the century to hold all four great offices of state: Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and Prime Minister?

Answer 30

Jim Callaghan

Question 31

What adjective is officially used to describe the water in bodies such as the Baltic Sea, which is not as saline as the open ocean due to the volume of fresh water that flows into it?

Answer 31

Brackish

Question 32

Which English poet married Erika, the daughter of the German writer Thomas Mann, in 1935 in order to secure her a British passport?

Answer 32

WH Auden

Question 33

In materials engineering, what is the term for the point when a body is permanently deformed through stress?

Answer 33

Yield point

Question 34

Now located 20km from the Estonian border, which city was the scene of the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917?

Answer 34

Pskov

Question 35

To the nearest 1%, what percentage f the air we breathe is oxygen?

Answer 35

21

Question 36

Although most of the original James Bond stories of Ian Fleming are narrated in the third person, one of the novels is largely told from a female point of view. Which one?

Answer 36

The Spy Who Loved Me

Question 37

Which 13th century Gothic cathedral was traditionally the setting for the coronation of most French kings?

Answer 37

Reims

Question 38

For which Italian club did Paul Gasgoigne play between leaving Tottenham Hotspur in 1992, and his return to British football with Rangers in 1995?

Answer 38

Lazio

Question 39

During the late 1800s, which cult religion was briefly practised by Native American tribes in the South Western United States, in the hope of ridding their lands of white settlers?

Answer 39

Ghost Dance

Question 40

Which American writer and publisher, in editorial charge of Cosmopolitan magazine for over thirty years from 1965, wrote the influential book Sex And The Single Girl?

Answer 40

Helen Gurley-Brown