Round 1: Starters for ten ...
Which stories begin with the following lines?
Q1: It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
This was, of course, the opening to Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell: an easy one to kick off with, and almost everyone got it right.
Q2: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Forty-four of you knew the famous opening to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: others opted for another Austen, usually Emma. One quizzer sensibly suggested How To Get A Wife (which pretty much sums up all Jane Austen novels in one title).
Q3: As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.
Many of you were stumped by this one. It's the opening to Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis - not, as someone suggested, In the Night Garden. Igglepiggle's predicament could be seen as quintessentially Kafka-esque, but you can't wake up as a monstrous insect if you never sleep ...
Q4: If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
This was, of course, the first line of J D Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and around half of you knew it. We suspect Ham on Rye was not an entirely serious answer.
Q5: The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
Only twenty-two of you knew that this was the first line of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, although there were many ingenious nautical suggestions, including Master and Commander, Moby Dick, Gulliver's Travels, Treasure Island, Powder Monkey and Swallows and Amazons. One answer opted for Bram Stoker's Dracula, published at around the same time, and in which Dracula does, after all, travel from Transylvania to Whitby by boat - so all credit for an intelligent guess.
Q6. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Q7: When I reached ‘G’ Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.
This one foxed a lot of people. Despite a vast range of plausible suggestions featuring novels with a military theme - including Birdsong, Bridge over the River Kwai, Saving Private Ryan, All Quiet on the Western Front, War Horse, and Catch 22 - this is actually the opening to Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, the prologue when Captain Charles Ryder takes a second look at the stately home where his company has been billeted and realises, 'I have been here before'. Unfortunately, most Pauline readers haven't.
Q8: We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
Another one that many of you initially found baffling. Over the 48 hours of the quiz, however, mysteriously, correct answers began to increase. We're not suspicious. Not remotely. It's the first line of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. You knew that. Didn't you?
Q9: Call me Ishmael.
You either got it or you didn’t. Although a couple of answers suggested The Bible, and others (not unreasonably) did as they were told and opted for Ishmael, these are, of course, the first three words of Herman Melville's masterpiece Moby Dick.
Q10: The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it 'the Riddle House,' even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.
'Argh! Hard!' wrote one quizzer: 'One of the Harry Potter's (I think goblet of fire'). This was indeed the right answer. We generously gave you a point if you simply pinned it as Potter, but a bonus if you got the right one in the series. The Half Blood Prince, The Deathly Hallows, The Philosopher's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets all had their supporters, but The Goblet of Fire it was.
Round 2: The eyes have it ...
Can you identify each of the following authors?
Q11 was J K Rowling: only six people didn’t get this one right.
Q12 was Shakespeare, and only seven of you failed to recognise him. One answer wittily (we think) suggested it might be Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, famous for his ambivalence towards the Bard.
Q13 was Charles Dickens, here looking slightly the worse for wear. Given that this photo was taken towards the end of his life, after approximately 3.8 million words worth of writing, he can surely be forgiven for appearing a little exhausted. Only six of you were able to identify him, with Tolkien the most popular alternative choice, as well as (rather bizarrely) Agatha Christie. 47 people drew a blank entirely.
Q14 was Jane Austen, the new face on the £10 note, recognised by enough people to throw the belief that we're shifting towards a cashless society into doubt.
The stylish specs in Q15 belonged to Stephen King, as many of you knew, although for 31 quizzers, they struck no chord whatsoever. Alternative suggestions included Ian McEwan (prefers frameless glasses these days), Bill Gates and Steve Jobs ...
Director George Devine said that Samuel Beckett had 'the monstrous good fortune of actually looking like one of his own plays - the bristled cadaver and mountain peak stare were the ultimate purifier that defied all endeavour, pity or hope'. This turned out to be just as true of our quiz: Q16 did indeed defy all hope, and only ten of you got it right. Plausible suggestions included Tolkien (again), Dostoevsky, Cormac McCarthy, Roald Dahl (and his less known brother 'Ronald Dahl'), as well as David Attenborough and Dr Seuss (thank you, Mr Smith's tutor set!).
In the week which saw book-lovers defying the coronavirus and queuing overnight in their hundreds to pick up the first copies of The Mirror and the Light, alas, only eleven quizzers recognised Q17 as Hilary Mantel. Alternatives included Sarah Kane, Carol Ann Duffy, and - a bold choice this from Miss McGreevy - Man City striker Sergio Aguero.
There is no resemblance. None at all. Nada. Zilch.
There was more funky eye-wear in Q18, variously attached to Arthur Koestler, Ian Fleming, Ted Hughes, Jean-Paul Sartre, Kurt Vonnegut, Graham Greene, Isaac Asimov and Truman Capote (really??), but these serious specs belonged, of course, to Harold Pinter, as a mere ten of you knew.
'BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own.' Yes, the dark eyes in Q18 belonged to George Orwell, as many of you correctly noted.
The eyes in Q19 stumped a few of you. Suggestions included Keats, Percy Shelley and the Mona Lisa - well at least that one got the gender right. Others were closer, if not 100% confident: 'Bronte (I don't know which one). Probably Emily, defo not Branwell'. Spot on: Branwell was the artist here, and the eyes he painted did indeed belong to his sister Emily.
Round 3: Shakespeare in Art
Each of these pictures is based on a Shakespeare play: can you identify which one?
Q21 was John Everett Millais's depiction of Ophelia from Hamlet: most people got this one right.
Q22: the yellow stockings should have been a giveaway - this is Malvolio in Twelfth Night, as painted by Daniel Maclise, and as correctly identified by most answers, although The Merchant of Venice was a popular alternative.
Q23: Only twelve people didn't get recognise the three weird sisters from Macbeth, memorably drawn here by Henry Fuseli.
Q24: And only fourteen of you failed to recognise Fuseli's painting of the Fairy Queen Titania wooing Bottom after his 'translation' into an ass in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Q25: They're young, they're in love, they're on a balcony - yes, it's Romeo and Juliet, as all but ten of you knew.
Q26: This one was tougher - thirty-two of you left it blank, and it drew the widest range of alternative answers, from Cymbeline to Hamlet (really???). The most popular suggestion was King Lear, who does, it's true, go wild in the country, but he doesn't stick antlers on his head. Some quizzers got the right character - Falstaff - but the wrong play: this isn't Henry V, or Henry IV (Parts I or II): this is The Merry Wives of Windsor, as painted by the appropriately named Robert Smirke, and an impressive eighteen of you identified it correctly.
Q27: most recognised this as a scene from King Lear, painted here by William Holmes Sullivan. It's the storm scene, which probably explains why the most popular alternative answer was The Tempest - which, spookily enough, was the answer to Q28 -
which shows Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo, charmingly imagined here by Johann Heinrich Ramberg. Twenty-four of you were completely perplexed: one suggested, hopefully, 'Lord of the Rings?'
Q29 shouldn't have been so tough. Only two of Shakespeare's plays feature twins, so you had a fifty fifty chance if you knew which ones they were. Sadly, most of you didn't. Only eight people spotted that this was The Comedy of Errors (which has two sets of twins - twin masters and twin servants - twin twins!!). Plausible alternatives included Two Gentlemen of Verona, and one quizzer suggested 'The MerchantS of Venice'. Nice try ...
Q30: The last question in our Shakespeare picture round stumped pretty much everyone: only ten recognised William Blake's drawing of Richard III before battle, confronting the ghosts of those he has murdered.
Round 4: And finally ...
Which literary works end with the following lines?
Q31 I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.
It's clearly been a while since Charles Dickens's Great Expectations was a fixture on the GCSE set text list, because more than forty people left this one blank. Suggestions (wrong) included The Age of Innocence, Dracula, Wuthering Heights, David Copperfield, Solaris, Rebecca and the frankly bemused ‘no idea’.
Q32 So we beat on, boats against the current, drawn back ceaselessly into the past.
Almost everyone got this one right: as one quizzer put it, 'The Great Gatsby, old sport’, by F Scott Fitzgerald. Not Life of Pi, as someone else suggested, although that definitely has boats in it.
Q33 They, hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,/Through Eden took their solitary way.
An impressive twenty-three quizzers correctly identified this as the ending to Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, although a few thought this was too easy and opted for the sequel, Paradise Regained. Hey, don't over-think it. The Bible was a popular alternative, as was the not unreasonable East of Eden.
Q34 My Master, has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly, — 'Surely I come quickly!' and hourly I more eagerly respond, — 'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!"
This stumped virtually everybody, with suggestions including Journey's End, Dante's Inferno, Heart of Darkness, Clarissa, Dracula and (inspired choice from several readers) The Book of Revelations. Nope. It's the last line of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. You thought that was 'Reader, I married him', didn't you? A creditable thirteen of you knew it wasn't.
Q35 And a police inspector is on his way here - to ask some - questions.
This should have been an easy one - the clue's in the line itself: it's the last moment of J B Priestley's An Inspector Calls, as a respectable thirty one quizzers correctly concluded.
Q36 I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
In contrast, this was tricky: fifty three people left it blank, although it clearly reminded a lot of people of Thomas Hardy, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Far From the Madding Crowd, and The Return of the Native were popular alternatives. The Faerie Queene was a slightly unexpected suggestion, as was War Horse (although when you think about it, it works rather well for War Horse).
Q37 Yes, let's go! (They do not move.)
They do not know, more like. Only seventeen people recognised the ending of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Over fifty left this one blank, but Mr Smith's tutor set, undaunted (and consistent) opted for The Cat in the Hat. A Seuss/Beckett mash-up: make it happen!
Q38 The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Yes, of course this was Animal Farm by George Orwell, and almost all of you knew it. And it's next term's junior play, 'coming soon to a theatre near you!' as Mr Staniforth couldn't resist adding.
Q39 Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
Quizzers racked their brains for all titles with a military theme: Parade’s End, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Henry V, Private Peaceful, Catch 22, All Quiet on the Western Front, Journey’s End ... But no. This was Hamlet, as a mere twelve of you knew. The blog can't work out whether to be or not to be worried about the member of the Politics Dept who suggested these were the final words of The Communist Manifesto. Come the revolution, I guess we'll find out.
Q40 "Well, I'm back," he said.
Our final final line proved a challenge. Several people (inevitably) attributed it to The Terminator but these are actually the last words of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as seven of you knew, with two even giving the correct title of the correct book, The Return of the King. Agorel vae!
So - what have we learned from this? Paulines know a lot about George Orwell and Douglas Adams: not so much about Evelyn Waugh and Margaret Atwood. Most recognised author is J K Rowling and least Charles Dickens - which is fascinating, given that the furore caused by the Potter publishing phenomenon was often compared to the fever surrounding the serial publication of Dickens's novels 150 years earlier. Will people still recognise J K Rowling in 150 years time? Who knows ... You're all pretty good at spotting scenes from Shakespeare's plays, with Macbeth scoring the highest recognition rate, but you start more books than you finish ...
Many thanks to Mr Kemp for putting the questions together, and to all those of you who participated: we hope you had fun. Special mentions for particularly witty and creative answers go to Mr Smith's tutor set, Noah Leach, Conor Sinnott, Erik Klein Wassink and Nikita Forrester, Mr Staniforth and Miss McGreevy. The winning quizzers were as follows:
In joint third place, with 34/40 each, are Miss Kinrade (SPJ) and Mr Hager's tutor set ...
In second place, with 37/40, is Ramsey Gordon ... and (drum roll) ...
the winner of this year's quiz, with a truly magnificent 38/40, is Hari Collins: congratulations!!!!
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