Hold your Horses! Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger (real name John Reid) was a masked crimefighter in the vein of Batman but set in the Wild West.

Zorro likewise was also a masked avenger but created a decade or so earlier.

Tonto was, of course, the Lone Ranger's loyal sidekick.

Butch Cavendish (not to be confused with the real Butch Cassidy) was the Lone Ranger's traditional arch nemesis.

Answer: Elizabeth Taylor

Despite the fact that the movie is set in Surrey, England and Elizabeth Taylor herself was born in England, the movie was actually filmed in California, USA.

Taylor was not the caster's first choice but fate intervened and this movie proved the making for this precocious 12 year old, setting her on the road to fame. It is extraordinary the number of stars now indelibly identified with classic movies and yet were not the first choice. Only five years earlier, for example, Vivien Leigh was initially turned down for the role of Scarlet O'Hara, a role now considered her own.

Despite her glass-cut English accent Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels, Belgium, the daughter of a Dutch baroness. In 1944 at the age of 15 she and her family were living in the Dutch town of Arnhem and found themselves right in the middle of the aborted allied airborne invasion known as Operation Market Garden, immortalised in the Cornelius Ryan book and movie 'A Bridge Too Far'.

Answer: Boxer

'Animal Farm' was Orwell's classic satire on the Russian Revolution.

Boxer is portrayed as a powerful, immensely strong, endearingly loyal but not very bright workhorse who mistakenly trusts those in charge to look after his best interests. Of course, those in charge have no such scruples and cynically work poor Boxer to death. In the novel Boxer is meant to represent the Russian working class.

Napoleon is a pig who takes over the farm and runs it according to his own rules. His character is based on Josef Stalin.

Napoleon clashes with Snowball over the principles of running the farm. Ultimately Napoleon banishes Snowball and turns him into a scapegoat. Snowball's character is based on Leon Trotsky.

The Old Major is a boar whose socialist utopian ideas are the inspiration for the rebellion which overthrows the human masters. The Old Major dies before this event, though, leaving Snowball and Napoleon to battle over the 'correct' interpretation of his legacy. If you had not guessed it already the Old Major was based on Karl Marx.

Answer: Marengo

The Battle of Marengo took place in 1800 after which Napoleon named his horse.

The Battle of Austerlitz took place five years later. Copenhagen was the Duke of Wellington's horse. He commanded the army that ultimately defeated him at Waterloo in 1815.

Secretariat sounds French but was actually a famous American racehorse. His record breaking times in all three American Triple Crown races were achieved by 1973 and amazingly still stand today. Secretariat is the only non-human to be included in ESPN's list of 50 greatest athletes of the century, ranked at 35th.

Answer: Pegasus

Pegasus the winged horse is one of the most famous and recognisable characters in Greek mythology.

His image has been used throughout history in fiction, movies, commerce and popular culture.

Mobil is a petrol company whose logo is the Pegasus.

The winged horse is also used by the Tristar Pictures inc.

Like Pegasus the horse Shadowfax was pure white and could be summoned when needed by the wizard Gandalf in the 'Lord of the Rings'. According to the book Shadowfax could run faster than the wind but he couldn't fly.

Answer: Rocinante

The novel 'Don Quixote', the man from La Mancha, was written by Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century and is considered to be one of the greatest novels in the world.

It features a delusional hero who fashions himself as a heroic knight in search of adventure and chivalry when in fact there isn't much going on in his part of the world where all monsters, giants and damsels in distress exist only in his febrile imagination.

He imagines windmills to be giants whom he bravely attacks. It's from this that the phrase 'tilting at windmills' comes, referring to someone who attacks imaginary enemies.

Don Quixote imagined his emaciated, clapped-out nag of a horse, Rocinante, to be a faithful steed but in reality was as comical as the forlorn figure on his back.

His 'adventures' included the hopeless quest for the love of the maiden Lady Dulcinea del Toboso. Bordering on insanity, Don Quixote inhabited an imagined world in which he cast himself as a classical hero. His epic self-delusion spawned the word 'quixotic'.

During his lifetime Cervantes became so fed up with his character being plagiarised by others that he wrote a second book ten years later killing off the eponymous hero in the hope that it would deter contemporary imitators.

Little could Cervantes have suspected that over four hundred years later his ideas and characters would still exert huge influence on today's popular culture.

Answer: Bucephalas

Bucephalus translates to English as 'ox head', referring to a branding mark on the horse's flank. According to legend Bucephalus was considered to be untrainable.

Alexander was the only person able to ride him and was able to do so because he observed that the horse was scared of his own shadow. Alexander was able to tame Bucephalus by making him face the sun so he could no longer see the shadow cast by his own body.

Darius (the third) was the King of the Achaemenid Persian empire which Alexander overthrew.

Cleitus (the Black) was one of Alexander's trusted generals who saved his life at the Battle of Granicus but was later rewarded for his pains by being murdered by Alexander whilst in a drunken rage.

Answer: Trigger

Roy 'the singing cowboy' Rogers was a box office star of film and then TV from the 1940s until the late 1950s.

Rogers was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and apart from his famous horse had a German Shepherd dog called Bullet.

In Christmas 1972 the British comedian, Benny Hill, charted a UK and Australian number one with a light-hearted parody of western-themed songs called 'Ernie the Fastest Milk Cart in the West' pulled by a horse also called Trigger.

Ernie's love interest is Sue (who lived all alone at Linley Lane at number 22) who has to compete for her affections against the local baker Ten Ton Ted from Teddington.

Eventually the two rivals square up 'under the blazing son' and in a parody of a western gunfight assail each other with produce from their respective wagons until Ernie is cruelly felled by a stale pork pie.

Benny Hill is now mostly remembered for his unfashionable and dated style of humour but he was also a very witty wordsmith. Check out this classic song on Youtube.

Answer: Centaur

Centaurs have the body and legs of a horse and the torso, arms and head of a human where the horse's neck would normally be.

The myth this fabulous creature has endured through the ages and can be found in modern popular culture. All of the other creatures mentioned are also mythical.

A hippogriff is half horse, half eagle. It is also found in Greek mythology as is the griffin which is half eagle and half lion.

The manticore is believed to originate in Persian or central Asian folklore although it was absorbed into the Ancient Greek hybrid menagerie. According to legend it had a human's head, the body of a lion and a tail either of a scorpion or a dragon.

Answer: Houyhnhnms

For a book written in 1726 'Gulliver's Travels' remains a brilliant satire which, like all brilliant books, transcends its age.

The Houyhnhnms were a race of graceful, intelligent horses who exuded kindness and culture. They contrasted with the disgusting and brutish humanoid Yahoos. Throughout the book Swift makes no secret of his disgust with mankind, although it is not clear whether it is just Europeans or humanity in general that revolts him.

Lilliput is perhaps the most famous continent visited by Gulliver but there are many more societies that the eponymous character discovers. Blefuscu was the island separated from the island of Lilliput by a 800 yard channel; the two bickering countries were a parody of 18th Century England and France.