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 dismissed 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 Chekhov: Shakespeare’s plays are bad enough, but yours are even worse?

Answer 9

Tolstoy

Question 10

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?

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, 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?

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 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?

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 Voluptuary Under The Horrors Of Digestion?

Answer 23

Prince George

Question 24

What type of mammal is a klipspringer?

Answer 24

Antelope

Question 25

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

Answer 25

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Question 26

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

Answer 26

Wotan

Question 27

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 27

Spycatcher

Question 28

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

Answer 28

Daleks

Question 29

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 29

Jim Callaghan

Question 30

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 30

Brackish

Question 31

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

Answer 31

WH Auden

Question 32

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

Answer 32

Yield point

Question 33

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

Answer 33

Pskov

Question 34

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

Answer 34

21

Question 35

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 35

The Spy Who Loved Me

Question 36

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

Answer 36

Reims

Question 37

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

Answer 37

Lazio

Question 38

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 38

Ghost Dance

Question 39

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 39

Helen Gurley-Brown