Quiz 26 Flashcards
In which European city are the graves of Igor Stravinsky, Ezra Pound and Sergei Diaghilev?
Venice
Goodbye, Farewell, Amen was the title of the last episode of which American TV series?
MASH
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?
The Tin Drum
No 1 Carlton Gardens has been whose official residence in London since the 1940s?
Foreign Secretary
Who was the first official Poet Laureate, appointed in 1668 and dismissed for refusing to take the oath of allegiance during the Glorious Revolution?
John Dryden
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?
The Burren
The feast of Candlemas occurs on the second day of which month?
February
Which figure from South American history gives his name to the currency of Venezuela?
Simon Bolivar
Who once said to Anton Chekhov: Shakespeare’s plays are bad enough, but yours are even worse?
Tolstoy
When 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?
Captcha
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?
Frog
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?
In Place Of Strife
In 2007, which best selling writer was appointed President of the Campaign for Rural England?
Bill Bryson
Bluebell, Black Rock, Cuckoo Maran and Araucana are hybrid varieties of which creatures?
Chickens
From which port did the Spanish Armada set sail in 1588?
Lisbon
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?
Dorothy Hodgkin
In the only outdoor public statue of him in London, sculpted by Francis Bird, which monarch is represented at the north gate entrance to St Bart’s Hospital, surmounted by reclining figures symbolising lameness and disease?
Henry VIII
Who, collectively, were Denny Doherty, John Phillips, Michelle Phillips and Cass Elliot?
The Mamas and Papas
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?
Linlithgow
A Goitre is the enlargement of which gland?
Thyroid
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?
Durban and Dunbar
The actor Lee Van Cleef 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 screen appearance as a villain in which classic western of 1952?
High Noon
Which Royal personage was the subject of the caricature by James Gillray, published in 1792, with the title A Voluptuary Under The Horrors Of Digestion?
Prince George
What type of mammal is a klipspringer?
Antelope
What is the full correct title of the body who annually hand out the Oscars?
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
In Wagner’s Ring Cycle of operas, who is the father of the Valkyries?
Wotan
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?
Spycatcher
Which instantly recognisable TV characters were originally designed in 1963 by BBC staff member Raymond P Cusick?
Daleks
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?
Jim Callaghan
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?
Brackish
Which English poet married Erika, the daughter of the German writer Thomas Mann, in 1935 in order to secure her a British passport?
WH Auden
In materials engineering, what is the term for the point when a body is permanently deformed through stress?
Yield point
Now located 20km from the Estonian border, which city was the scene of the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917?
Pskov
To the nearest 1%, what percentage of the air we breathe is oxygen?
21
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?
The Spy Who Loved Me
Which 13th century Gothic cathedral was traditionally the setting for the coronation of most French kings?
Reims
For which Italian club did Paul Gascoigne play between leaving Tottenham Hotspur in 1992, and his return to British football with Rangers in 1995?
Lazio
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?
Ghost Dance
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?
Helen Gurley-Brown
