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Arts & Entertainment | Literature | General |
See also Tolkien.
Author | Title | Question | Answer | |
(The Arabian Nights) | Number of nights | 1001 | ||
Narrator (saved her life by telling stories for 1,001 nights) | Scheherezade | |||
Translated into English by | Sir Richard Burton | |||
Douglas Adams | Hitchhiker's Guide (series) | The starship that picks up Arthur and Ford, having been stolen by Zaphod at its official launch: the first spacecraft to make use of the Infinite Improbability Drive | Heart of Gold | |
Name of the computer, built by a pan–dimensional, hyper–intelligent species of beings (whose three–dimensional protrusions into our universe are ordinary white mice) to come up with the Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything | Deep Thought | |||
Name of the greatest supercomputer of all time, designed by the above computer to calculate the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything | Earth | |||
Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything |
42 | |||
Creature that could translate all languages | Babel fish | |||
The most intelligent species on Earth – described by Slartibartfast as "the protrusions into our dimension of vast, hyper–intelligent pan–dimensional beings" | Mice | |||
The second most intelligent species on Earth – tried to warn the humans about the planned destruction of the planet (but their messages were misinterpreted as "amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits") | Dolphins | |||
The name of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe | Milliways | |||
Richard Adams | Watership Down | Name of the warren that the rabbits leave to start a new life at Watership Down | Sandleford | |
The Plague Dogs | Illustrated by | A. Wainwright | ||
Isaac Asimov | Foundation Trilogy | Said to have been inspired by (Gilbert & Sullivan opera) | Iolanthe | |
Jane Austen | Pride and Prejudice | Mr. Darcy's Derbyshire pile | Pemberley | |
Emma | Home of George Knightley (whom Emma eventually marries) | Donwell Abbey | ||
Sense and Sensibility | Surname of Elinor and Marianne | Dashwood | ||
J. M. Barrie | The Admirable Crichton (play) | Profession of the eponymous character | Butler | |
Ray Bradbury | Fahrenheit 451 | Firemen's job | Burning books | |
Charlotte Bronte | Jane Eyre | Mr. Rochester's home | Thornfield Hall | |
John Bunyan | Pilgrim's Progress | Main character (the pilgrim) | Christian | |
Christian's ultimate destination | The Celestial City | |||
Christian's home, and the starting place of his pilgrimage | The City of Destruction | |||
Goods that exemplify temptation are sold at | Vanity Fair | |||
Place that gave its name to a novel first published in 1848 and a magazine revived in 1983 after a gap of 47 years | ||||
Christian's friend and companion, martyred in Vanity (Fair) | Faithful | |||
Resident of Vanity (Fair) who joins Christian after Faithful's death | Hopeful | |||
Swamp into which Christian sinks under his burden | Slough of Despond | |||
Idyllic mountains from which the Celestial City can be seen | Delectable Mountains | |||
Lord of the City of Destruction, with whom Christian has a fight | Apollyon | |||
Giant who lives (with his wife) in Doubting Castle | Despair | |||
Anthony Burgess | A Clockwork Orange | Alex's gang (Dim, Georgie and Pete) | The Droogs | |
Miguel Cervantes | Don Quixote | Don Quixote's horse | Rosinante | |
Don Quixote's squire | Sancho Panza | |||
Sancho Panza's donkey (in English) | Dapple | |||
Leslie Charteris | The Saint (series) | The Saint's actual name | Simon Templar | |
Geoffrey Chaucer | The Canterbury Tales | Inn at Southwark where the pilgrims met | Tabard | |
Prize for the teller of the best tale | Free dinner | |||
The pilgrims met in (month) |
April | |||
First tale | Knight's | |||
Last tale | Parson's | |||
'Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach' | Clerk of Oxenford | |||
James Fenimore Cooper | Last of the Mohicans | Protagonist – a child of European parents, brought up by Native Americans | Hawkeye, a.k.a. Natty Bumppo | |
Name of the title character | Uncas | |||
Father of the title character | Chingachgook | |||
Bernard Cornwell | Sharpe series | See separate page | ||
Daniel Defoe | Robinson Crusoe | Based on the story of real–life castaway | Alexander Selkirk | |
Crusoe's home city | York | |||
Fyodor Dostoevsky | The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot | The author, the murderer Smerdyakov in the Brothers, the central character in The Idiot (Prince Myshkin), and several other characters in his novels: all suffered from | Epilepsy | |
Roddy Doyle | The Barrytown trilogy (The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van) | Name of the working–class Dublin family that's central to the three novels | Rabbitte | |
Alexander Dumas | The Three Musketeers | Their motto | All for one and one for all | |
Daphne du Maurier | Rebecca | Name of the house | Manderley | |
George Eliot | Silas Marner | Occupation of the title character | Linen weaver | |
E. M. Forster | Howard's End | Howard's End is a | House | |
Frederick Forsyth | The Day of the Jackal | ... is about an assassination attempt on | Charles de Gaulle | |
John Fowles | The Collector | The Collector collected | Butterflies | |
Mark Haddon | The Curious Incident ... | Name of the dog | Wellington | |
Thomas Hardy | Wessex novels | Casterbridge is the name Hardy uses for | Dorchester | |
Christminster is the name Hardy uses for | Oxford | |||
The Mayor of Casterbridge | Michael Henchard sells his wife for | Five guineas | ||
Ernest Hemingway | Death in the Afternoon | ... is a non–fiction book about the history and traditions of (sport or activity) | Bullfighting | |
Frank Herbert | Dune | Name of the precious spice | Melange | |
Jack Higgins | The Eagle has Landed | ... is about an attempt to kidnap (real–life political figure) | Winston Churchill | |
James Hilton | Goodbye Mr. Chips | Mr. Chips's school | Brookfield | |
Mr. Chips's subject | Latin | |||
Lost Horizon | Name of the hidden paradise, found in the Valley of the Blue Moon | Shangri–La | ||
Victor Hugo | Les Miserables | Jean Valjean's first crime | Stealing a loaf of bread | |
Aldous Huxley | Brave New World | Title is taken from (Shakespeare's) | The Tempest | |
Washington Irving | Rip van Winkle | Mountain range in which the title character fell asleep | Catskills | |
He slept for (length of time) | 20 years | |||
While he slept, he missed the | American War of Independence | |||
E. L. James | Fifty Shades of Grey (trilogy) | Mr. Grey's first name | Christian | |
Marlon James | A Brief History of Seven Killings | (2015 Booker winner): tells the story of the attempted murder, in 1976, of (real–life popular music legend) | Bob Marley | |
Jerome K. Jerome | Three Men in a Boat | Start and end points of the journey | Kingston | |
Oxford | ||||
Stephen King | Christine | Christine was | A car | |
Harper Lee | To Kill a Mockingbird | Name of the narrator (actual given names Jean Louise) | Scout Finch | |
Name of her lawyer father | Atticus Finch | |||
Name of her brother | Jeremy (Jem) | |||
Jack London | Call of the wild | Name of the dog (the central character – a St. Bernard–Scotch (rough) collie cross) | Buck | |
Compton Mackenzie | Whisky Galore | Name of the ship (SS Politician in real life) | SS Cabinet Minister | |
Name of the islands (Eriskay in real life) | Great and Little Todday | |||
Hilary Mantel | Wolf Hall | Wolf Hall (Wulfhall) is the seat of (historical family) | The Seymours | |
Christopher Marlowe | Doctor Faustus | "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" – refers to | Helen of Troy | |
George R. R. Martin | A Song of Ice and Fire (series, including A Game of Thrones) | Continent where the series is mainly set | Westeros | |
Capital and largest city of Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms | King's Landing | |||
Continent to the east of Westeros | Essos | |||
Home of the Stark family | Winterfell (Castle) | |||
The vast, flat grassland on the eastern continent: gives its name to the copper–skinned race of warlike nomads who live there, and their language – which you can now learn in real life | Dothraki | |||
W. Somerset Maugham | The Moon and Sixpence | Artist featured in | Gauguin | |
Herman Melville | Moby Dick | Name of the ship | Pequod | |
Lost by Captain Ahab while hunting Moby Dick | His leg | |||
Margaret Mitchell | Gone with the Wind | The O'Hara family's plantation | Tara | |
City that burned | Atlanta | |||
Nicholas Montserrat | The Cruel Sea | Name of the ship | Compass Rose | |
Neil Munro | Para Handy stories | Name of Para Handy's boat (and title of the TV series) | The Vital Spark | |
George Orwell | Animal Farm | Name of the farm | Manor Farm | |
Pig who ultimately takes charge of the farm – said to be based on Stalin; known in the French version as César | Napoleon | |||
Napoleon's main rival, and the original head of the farm after Jones's overthrow; said to be mainly based on Trotsky, but also has elements from Lenin | Snowball | |||
Animals that represent the oppressed masses | Sheep | |||
Anthem – a parody of The Internationale – banned by Napoleon | Beasts of England | |||
Nineteen Eighty–Four | First published | 1949 | ||
"Superstate" (one of three) in which set | Oceania | |||
Official (propaganda) language of Oceania | Newspeak | |||
Ministry responsible for supporting Oceania's perpetual war | Ministry of Peace | |||
Ministry responsible for rationing and controlling food, goods, and domestic production | Ministry of Plenty | |||
Ministry responsible for controlling information: news, entertainment, education, and the arts (i.e. censorship) | Ministry of Truth | |||
Ministry responsible for identifying, monitoring, arresting and converting dissidents (real and imagined) | Ministry of Love | |||
Referred to as "Airstrip One" | Great Britain | |||
Winston Smith's greatest fear (Room 101) | Rats | |||
Winston's drink of choice | Victory gin | |||
The Party's security enforcement agency | Thought Police | |||
David Peace | The Damned United | Football club referred to in the title | Leeds United | |
Terry Pratchett | Discworld series | In a reflection of Hindu mythology, the Discworld rests on the backs of four huge elephants which are in turn standing on the back of Great A'Tuin, who is a (type of creature) | Turtle | |
Chief city of Discworld | Ankh–Morpork | |||
Patrician (ruler) of Ankh–Morpork: sometimes said to be based on the real–life Italian statesman and diplomat, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) | Lord Havelock Vetinari | |||
School of Wizardry in Ankh–Morpork (the name is said to be a pun on the 'Invisible College' – the name given to a group of English scientists led by Robert Boyle in the mid–17th century) | Unseen University | |||
Archchancellor of the Unseen University (appointed in Moving Pictures – the 10th novel in the series) | Mustrum Ridcully | |||
In The Light Fantastic (the 2nd novel in the series), the Librarian of the Unseen University Library is turned (by a beam of magic) into an | Orang–utan | |||
Rides a horse called Binky (because "it's a nice name"); has a manservant called Albert, an apprentice called Mortimer, and an adopted daughter called Ysabell; (Mort and Ysabell have a daughter named Susan) | Death | |||
Discworld's equivalent to Father Christmas: rides a sleigh pulled by Gouger, Rooter, Tusker and Snouter | The Hogfather | |||
Salman Rushdie | Midnight's Children | ... is an allegory on (the children were born at the exact moment of ...) | The partition of India | |
Sir Walter Scott | Ivanhoe | Set in the reign of | Richard I (the Lionheart) | |
Name invented by Scott for the father of the title character | Cedric (of Rotherwood) | |||
Nevile Shute | A Town like Alice | 'Alice' refers to | Alice Springs | |
Adam Smith | The Wealth of Nations | Demonstrated the improvements in productivity that could be achieved by the specialised division of labour, using the example of an imagined factory that made | Pins | |
Alexander Solzhenitsyn | One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich | Surname of the title character | Shukhov | |
Muriel Spark | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | The school at which Miss Brodie teaches | Marcia Blaine School for Girls | |
John Steinbeck | The Grapes of Wrath | Name of the family that seeks a better life in California | Joad | |
State that they leave to go to California | Oklahoma | |||
Bram Stoker | Dracula | Yorkshire fishing port at which Dracula comes ashore, when the ship on which he is a passenger runs aground | Whitby | |
Name of the ship on which Dracula comes ashore | Demeter | |||
Irving Stone | The Agony and the Ecstasy | Artist featured in | Michelangelo | |
Lust for Life | Painter featured in | Vincent van Gogh | ||
Jonathan Swift | Gulliver's Travels | Gulliver's occupation | Ship's surgeon | |
Gulliver's ship | The Antelope | |||
Island that Lilliput is at war with | Blefescu | |||
Land of giants | Brobdingnag | |||
Flying island: a kingdom devoted to the arts of music, mathematics and astronomy, but unable to use them for practical ends | Laputa | |||
Primitive humanoid creatures who serve equine masters | Yahoos | |||
Big–endians and little–endians argued over how to | Eat a boiled egg | |||
The only real country that Gulliver visits – where he asks the Emperor "to excuse my performing the ceremony imposed upon my countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix" | Japan | |||
W. M. Thackeray | Vanity Fair | Title comes from | Pilgrim's Progress | |
Tolstoy | War and Peace | Battle (of 1805) that plays a major part in the novel: Prince Andrei Bolkonsky is wounded, then rescued by his hero Napoleon Bonaparte | Austerlitz | |
Jules Verne | 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea | Name of the submarine | Nautilus | |
Captain of the Nautilus | Captain Nemo | |||
Around the World in 80 Days | London club that Phileas Fogg's journey begins at | Reform Club | ||
Amount of Fogg's bet (worth around £1.8 million in 2019, according to Wikipedia) | £20,000 | |||
Journey to the Centre of the Earth | Professor Lidenbrock, his nephew Axel (the narrator) and their guide Hans, descend into a volcano in | Iceland | ||
Kurt Vonnegut | Slaughterhouse 5 | Background (a WWII campaign in which the author took part) | The bombing of Dresden | |
Lew Wallace | Ben–Hur | First name of the title character | Judah | |
Keith Waterhouse | Billy Liar | Type of business that Billy works in | Undertaker's | |
Evelyn Waugh | Brideshead Revisited | Name of Sebastian Flyte's teddy bear | Aloysius | |
H. G. Wells | The First Men in the Moon | Anti–gravity matter used to propel the spaceship | Cavorite | |
The Time Machine | Subterranean mutants who bred humans for food | Morlocks | ||
P. G. Wodehouse | (The Jeeves and Wooster stories) | Jeeves's given name | Reginald | |
Bertie Wooster's club | The Drones | |||
Blandings Castle | The Empress of Blandings is a | (Berkshire) pig | ||
John Wyndham | Day of the Triffids | Triffids could be killed by | Salt water |
© Haydn Thompson 2017–23