Unreal-Estate and Classified Ads - Tribute Quiz

Answer: The Magic Faraway Tree

The Magic Faraway Tree is home to many of Enid Blyton's best-loved characters, Moonface among them. Once you reach the top you can enter the portal to whichever fantasy land happens to be visiting at the time - but watch out! Not all of these strange countries boasts a happy and welcoming atmosphere.

Answer: Space Hotel U.S.A.

Mr Willie Wonka takes Charlie Bucket and his family to see Space Hotel U.S.A. in Roald Dahl's 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator'. The Hotel is described as having 'a tennis-court, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a children's playroom and five hundred luxury bedrooms, each with a private bath.' It is also equipped with air-conditioning and a gravity machine. Pity about that Knid infestation...

Answer: Arnette, Texas

Arnette is one of the towns created by Stephen King in his apocalyptic epic, 'The Stand'. When the Superflu (known on the West coast as Captain Trips) breaks out, its point of origin is traced to the small town and, despite a strict quarantine, only Stuart inexplicably survives. With his fellow 'immunes' he travels under the care of prophet Mother Abigail to Colorado, where they attempt to re-create society and civilisation in the Boulder Free Zone.

Answer: Birnam Wood

'Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are;
Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him.'
So says the third apparition in Shakespeare's bloody tragedy, but Macbeth forgets what every poor fool who ever made a pact with the devil did: consider the promise from every possible side - there's much is lost in interpretation!

Answer: Mr Wemmick

Wemmick, in Charles Dickens's 'Great Expectations', gives a new meaning to the phrase 'An Englishman's home is his castle'. Apart from the four-foot wide by two-foot deep moat, the house boasts a flagstaff and a battery. '"And at nine o'clock every night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, "the gun fires. There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I think you'll say he is a Stinger."'

Answer: Ankh-Morpork

In Terry Pratchett's time-travel instalment of the Ankh-Morpork Watch books (Discworld series), 'Night Watch', Commander Sam Vimes is catapaulted back in time away from his cushy government job, his well-run police force and his aristocratic, dragon-fancying wife Sybill and into the unknown early days of the Watch. Under a different identity he rents a room from a very young Rosie Palm and watches his own young self struggling with a new position in the force.

Answer: Canterbury

For those who can find time to decode the Early Modern English or get hold of a decent translation, Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' are a joyous and hilarious read. Written in the fourteenth century, they still resonate today with their bawdy, romantic and even feminist narratives. Sadly, Chaucer never completed them, citing in the text a religious epiphany which precluded him from writing any more such immoral and blasphemous tales (the Summoner's Tale, told against the Friar in retaliation, is scatological in the extreme). Whether or not this claim of Chaucer's is true, no-one knows, but most readers will wish he had continued.

Answer: The Land where the Bong Tree grows

The Owl and the Pussycat, the eponymous heroes of the poem by Edward Lear, can well afford the shilling. 'They took some honey and plenty of money, wrapped up in a five-pound note.' Whether or not the ring is worth a shilling is, of course, rather dubious, since:

'There in a wood a Piggy-Wig stood,
with a ring at the end of his nose.
his nose,
his nose,
with a ring at the end of his nose.'

Nonetheless, this must be one of the sweetest and most romantic nonsense poems ever written.

Answer: Monte Cristo

In Alexandre Dumas' exquisitely tragic epic, young Edmond Dantes (the self-styled Count of Monte Cristo) escapes from the prison where he has spent fourteen years to wreak disaster and ruinous revenge on his false accusers. Everyone who has ever held a grudge or considered revenge should read this heart-wrenching novel. One of those ones you'll stay up all night to finish.

Answer: Narnia

C.S. Lewis's 'Narnia' series are amongst the most beautiful tales for children ever written. Although the books start (in the chronicles' chronology) with 'The Magician's Nephew' a good fifty years before the Pevensie children go to stay in the old Professor's house for their summer holidays, the best-known is 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (the first to be written). Lucy, the first Daughter of Eve to discover the strange and magical land of Narnia, pushes her way through the back of a wardrobe to find herself in a sad land of eternal winter, where an evil witch has turned many of the Talking Beasts into stone...

Answer: The Commitments

The classified ad Jimmy Rabbitte, Jr., places in the 'Hot Press' classifieds, is taken here directly from the novel. 'The Commitments', the first instalment in Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy, tells the tale of a rough, raw soul band looking to make it big.

This was made into what is perhaps Alan Parker's best film in 1991. And the lineup? From the film: 'I'd like to introduce you to the hardest-workin' band in the world. On bass, Derek "Meatman" Scully. On piano, Steven "Soul Surgeon" Clifford. Dean "Mr Nipples" Fay on sax. Joey "The Lips" Fagan on trumpet. Our gorgeous chanteuses are Bernie, Imelda, and Natalie. Deco "Deep Throat" Cuffe on vocals. On lead guitar, Outspan "Fender Bender" Foster. Finally, on drums, Mickah "Don't (argue) With Me" Wallace. Ladies and gentlemen, The Commitments.'

Answer: Norland

Mansfield Park, from Jane Austen's novel of the same name, is the seat of the Bertrams; Hartfield belongs to the father of Emma, Austen's eponymous heroine; Netherfield is the estate let by Mr Bingley in 'Pride and Prejudice'. Norland Park is the home out of which the Dashwood women are turned at the beginning of 'Sense and Sensibility'. Sadly none of the details provided in Emma Thompson's excellent screenplay (stables, lake, walnut grove) could be included as they are not mentioned in the novel.

Answer: The Hundred-Acre Wood

This is the home of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Kanga and Roo, Piglet, Owl and Eeyore (an even weirder infestation of creatures than in Oz!). Given that Pooh can't abide a life without 'hunny', it follows that there must be bees here, surely?

Answer: The Quangle-Wangle's Hat

'The hat was a hundred and two feet wide, with ribbons and bibbons on every side, and bells and buckles and loops and lace, so nobody ever could see the face of the Quangle-Wangle Quee.' I couldn't resist another Lear - 'The Quangle-Wangle's Hat' features some of his best characters and is among my favourite poems.

Answer: The Secret Garden

In Frances Hodgson Burnett's beautiful tale, Mary Lennox escapes the outbreak of cholera in India only to lose her parents and her beloved ayah (nanny). She is whisked away to England where she breaks into the walled garden of a dead woman, much to the consternation of the devoted widower's staff, and brings life back to it. I would have loved to create a question on Oscar Wilde's sentimental children's story 'The Selfish Giant', but that is for another time.