A LITERARY WAR QUIZ: books, plays, poems and films about The Great War
1. Who wrote: "If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied"
(Rudyard Kipling)
2. What is the Anglicised title of the German anti-war novel Im Westen nichts Neues
(All Quiet on the Western Front)
3. Which poet provided the title for Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 novel set during the Italian campaign?
(George Peele composed the lyric poem “A Farewell to Arms” in 1590)
4. The opening line of which notable poem of remembrance forms the acronym: TSGNOAWTALGO
(“For the Fallen”, Laurence Binyon)
5. Who was The Last Fighting Tommy?
(Harry Patch - this was the title of his autobiography)
6. Which fictional WWI veteran – the hero of a hugely popular series of post-war thrillers - was described by the poet Cecil Day Lewis as “an unspeakable public school bully”?
(Bulldog Drummond)
7. Who was suffering from shell shock in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway?
(Septimus Warren Smith)
8. In which story did a famous fictional detective utter the supposedly prophetic words: “There’s an east wind coming…”?
(“His Last Bow”)
9. Complete the third line (clue: it’s in Latin):
“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children, ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: ……………………………………………………”
(Dulce et Decorum est, from the poem of that title by Wilfred Owen)
10. “Joey” was the star of a children’s book, a prize-winning West End play, and a film. What was Joey?
(A horse – War Horse)
11. A notable WWI play and a notable WWI novel both ended in “End” – name both
(R.C. Sherrif’s Journey’s End and Ford Maddox Ford’s Parade’s End - both are needed for one point – no half-point for getting only one)
12. A poignant eight-line poem’s last line yields the acronym: “AWYSYRMOTD” – what is the actual line?
(“And when you sleep you remind me of the dead” – from “Dug-Out” by Siegfried Sassoon)
13. In which novel does a granddaughter try to decipher her grandfather’s WWI journals?
(Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks)
14. What was the title of Shirley’s mum’s memoirs covering WWI? (1 point)
And who played Shirley’s mum in the 1979 TV adaptation? (1 point)
((a) Testament of Youth (b) Cheryl Campbell)
15. A 1917 song which started with the lines “Up to your waist in water/ Up to your eyes in slush” provided the title for a 1960s musical. Name the musical.
(“Oh, What a Lovely War!”)
16. In which battle were ghostly Agincourt archers supposed to have helped British troops? (1 point)
And who wrote the story which gave rise to the myth? (1 point)
((a) Mons (b) Arthur Machen)
17. What connects Dr. Evil and a fictional WWI flying ace?
(Bigglesworth – Bigglesworth was Biggles’s surname and Mr. Bigglesworth was Dr. Evil’s hairless pet cat)
18. In which trilogy of novels is the real-life psychologist Dr. W.H.R. Rivers one of the main characters?
(Regeneration, Pat Barker)
19. In which collection of WWI-set spy stories does the Hairless Mexican appear?
(Ashenden, W. Somerset Maugham)
20. Give the title (in English) of a darkly comic Czech novel about a WWI soldier
(The Good Soldier Švejk – Scweik is acceptable – by Jaroslav Hašek)
21. A member of the Holywood Ten wrote a novel about an American soldier horribly injured by an exploding artillery shell. Give the title of the novel.
(Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo)
22. Give the first name of the fictional character who plans to fake insanity by sticking pencils up his nose, wearing underpants on his head, and going “wibble, wibble”?
(Edmund Blackadder)
23. What turned out to be the location of “some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England”?
(Skyros, the Greek island on which Rupert Brooke was buried)
24. In which 1987 novel does John James Todd, fighting on the Western Front, find himself being targeted by a homicidal Scottish soldier?
(The New Confessions, William Boyd)
25. Who wrote: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”
(Wilfred Owen, for a preface to his collected poems)
26. A “psalm-singing, skinny old maid” was the heroine of a 1935 novel set in Central Africa at the start of WWI.
Give the book’s title and author. (1 point).
Name the stars of the film version. (1 point)
((a) The African Queen, C.S. Forrester (b) Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart)
27. In a 1916 Spanish novel with a “revelatory” title, the sons-in-law of an Argentinian land-owner find themselves fighting on opposite sides in WWI. The English translation was the best-selling book in the US in 1919. Give the English title and author.
(Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez)
28. The most commercially successful film of 1941 was a biographical account of an American WWI sharpshooter – name it.
(Sergeant York, played by Gary Cooper)
29. One of the 20th Century’s most famous comic strip characters often imagined himself fighting a genuine WWI fighter ace. Name the character and the ace (the latter’s nickname will do).
(Snoopy and The Red Baron - or Baron von Richthofen)
30. In a classic 1930s French film, a group of imprisoned French officers plot their escape from the Germans. Give its title.
(La Grande Illusion of The Grand Illusion)
31. Which event was the subject of the 2005 film, Joyeux Noel?
(The Christmas Truce – or the Christmas football match)
32. In which autobiographical book did Aircraftman Shaw describe his experiences during WWI?
(Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence – who returned to the Air Force in 1925 as Aircraftman Shaw)
33. Its authorship is contested, but this epic novel concerning the experiences of Cossacks during the years of WWI won its author the Nobel Prize for Literature. Name the book.
(And Quiet Flows the Don or Quietly Flows the Don, Mikhail Sholokhov)
34. Which poet was the character David Cromlech in Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer based on?
(Robert Graves)
35. “David Cromlech” (see previous question) had already published a compelling novelised account of his own WWI experiences by the time Memoirs of an Infantry Officer was published in 1930. Name the book.
(Goodbye to All That)
36. A young British actor played Harry in a series of non-WW1 films, then Jack in a TV movie – who was Jack?
(John Kipling, Jack Kipling, and Rudyard Kipling’s son are all acceptable – the actor is Daniel Radcliffe, but that’s irrelevant)
37. Four French soldiers were unfairly court-martialled for ”cowardice” in this 1935 novel, later filmed.
Name the book (1 point).
Name the famous poem from which the title was taken (1 point).
((a) Paths of Glory (b) Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”)
38. This GBS play was not set in a hotel. Name the play, including its subtitle.
(Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes)
39. A slip of paper with the words “Kasredin”, “cancer” and “v.l.” on it leads to the uncovering of a dastardly German plot to foment trouble in the Muslim world. Name the novel.
(Greenmantle, John Buchan)
40. Give the astrological, upwardly-mobile title of this BBC co-founder’s account of his Military Cross-winning exploits as a WWI fighter ace.
(Sagittarius Rising, Cecil Lewis)
41. “If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base…”
Supply the next line.
(“And speed glum heroes up the line to death.” From “Base Details” by Siegfried Sassoon)
42. Name the film – made during the war - in which the hero dreams of capturing 13 Germans by throwing foul-smelling cheese into their trench.
(Shoulder Arms – a 1918 Charlie Chaplin film)
43. What was the name of the medal which pilot Lt. Bruno Stachel tries to win in the novel and film named after it?
(The Blue Max, Jack D. Hunter – Stachel was played by George Peppard in the 1966 film version)
44. Name the novel – later filmed – in which Charles Rainier wakes up in a Liverpool asylum in 1919 unable to remember the last two years of his life. As WWII approaches he tries to solve the mystery of his missing years.
(Random Harvest, James Hilton)
45. Who wrote the poem whose first line and title form the acronym “WYSMOTMD”?
(Charles Sorley, “When you see millions of the mouthless dead”)
46. Who connects a musical about Queen and a detective novel about the investigation into the inexplicable shooting of a titled soldier and war poet.
(Ben Elton wrote the musical We Will Rock You and the novel The First Casualty)
47. Which novel about WWI – the last in a trilogy - won the Booker Prize?
(The Ghost Road, Pat Barker)
48. Published a year after the war, this attack on the Versailles Treaty helped establish the international reputation of the British economist who wrote it. Name the book.
(The Economic Consequences of the Peace, John Maynard Keynes)
49. Which minister in Mrs. Thatcher’s government wrote a scathing non-fiction account of British generals’ conduct of the 1915 Western front offensives. (1 point)
And which type of animal did he compare them to in the title of his book? (1point)
((a) Alan Clark, (b) Donkeys)
NOTES:
Yes, there were supposed to be 50 questions, but I - being a sloppy idiot - missed out No.47 in my original list.
There are 54 points available in total
Where there is one point for answering two question, no half-marks will be awarded.
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