The Christmas quiz: literature and the arts
- What is the name of the family that adopted Paddington Bear? And for a bonus point, name their housekeeper.
- In David Hockney’s famous painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, who are Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy?
- Among his “more h’intimate friends”, how is the Dickens character Jack Dawkins better known?
- What was the Christian name of Shakespeare’s only known son?
- In poetry, what line follows: a) “If I should die, think only this of me” b) “I was much too far out all my life” c) “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings”?
- Who became, shortly before his death in 1976, the first British composer to be awarded a life peerage?
- In Beowulf, what is the name of the monster that our hero must slay?
- By what names are the novelists Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell better known?
- In 1911, Pablo Picasso was arrested by the French police in connection with which dastardly crime in Paris?
- Blobism describes a movement in which creative field?
- What are the first names of the three children at the heart of The Secret Garden? And what is the surname of the siblings in The Chronicles of Narnia?
- Which bestselling novel, from 1992, was set at the fictional Hampden College, in Vermont?
- Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel Things Fall Apart takes its name from a work by which poet?
- Which novel has a character called Major Major Major Major? And in which would you find Humbert Humbert?
- What is Dracula author Bram Stoker’s first name short for?
- Reviewing a new book in 1922, Arnold Bennett observed that its author had “made novel reading into a fair imitation of penal servitude”. What was the offending book?
