Show of Hands on the Battlefield Dancefloor Quiz

Answer: At sea

The tale is quite clear here, lyrics such as "Sad reports from coastal stations", "The mooring empty still unaccounted" and "Another man is overboard" all point clearly to this being the story of a sailor lost at sea.

According to the notes on the album insert, the song was inspired by the tale of Donald Crowhurst who entered a 'round the world' solo yacht race. Realising he was out of his depth he waited in shelter with the intention of re-joining the race at the end, bringing up the rear. But things didn't pan out that way.

Answer: Trafalgar

Each verse considers the eve of a battle and the drinking that goes before. What better to take your mind off the high-stakes day to follow than an evening of drinking and dancing. Written by Steve Knightley, he has said that the initial inspiration was for the song was Shakespeare's "Henry V", where in act IV, on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, King Henry walks through the English army in disguise to find out the soldiers' real views.
As the verse concerning Agincourt goes:

"Soldiers round the campfire singing dirty songs
Passing out the ale and even Henry sings along."

There are four verses to this ditty, the battle not listed above being Waterloo.

Answer: Barley

"You'll get by
you always do
For the wind that shakes the barley
Never touches you"

A song of middle-aged angst. Another song written by Steve Knightley. As he notes in the lyrics booklet, the older generations suffer as much as the younger ones but tend to be better at dealing with it.

Answer: Guillemots

This song is about a wrecked ship. The title of the song, "Forfarshire", refers to the ship that was wrecked on the Farne Islands in September 1838. More notably a certain Grace Darling and her father who rowed out to rescue survivors from the shipwreck. This song was written by Kirsty Merryn about that incident.

Verse two starts:
"The sea like troubled stone
Fighting itself to make waste of my bones
Guillemots floating like knots on a string"

I am sure the imagery would work with other seabirds.

Answer: Tamar

This song is another written by Steve Knightley, who describes it as Cornish Reggae.
The Tamar Moon is a reference to the River Tamar, which forms about 90% of the border between England and Cornwall.

As noted in the lyric booklet this is the tale of a doomed love affair. Doomed because the man can't compete with the attractions of Cornwall.

The relevant lyric appears halfway through the song:

"Come back dreckley come back soon
I'm outside howling at the Tamar moon
Don't want to sing a hound dog tune"

What does "dreckley" mean? Well, I think it is the Cornish dialect for "directly". But on the other hand, I have heard the term "dreckley" defined by a Cornishman as being like the Spanish word maņana, but without the sense of urgency.
In which case asking the girl to "come back dreckley" isn't going to achieve much.

Answer: Sir John Moore

Sir John Moore was originally a Lieutenant Colonel of the 51st Regiment of Foot in the Napoleonic Wars. Through time and amalgamation over 200 years this regiment has become part of the Rifle Regiment. The motto of the Rifle Regiment, inherited from one or more of its predecessors is "Swift and Bold". Or in Latin "Celer et Audax", the subtitle of the song.

The song was written for a concert by the 6th Battalion of the Rifle Regiment and opens with the lines:

"Two hundred years behind the Red Brick wall
Lets drink to the health of bold John Moore".

Answer: Nightingale

A song of adoration, the woman adores her soldier boy and his smile. Written by Irishman Adrian Mannering, the song starts with the phrase "Oh my love he's a soldier for freedom". A lot of the song is normal words about adoration of ones true love. But I find the penultimate verse more interesting for the lyrics.

"Oh the city is no place for a farmer
And the riot is no place for a child
And the battle's no place for my true love
And black is no colour for a bride".

Indicating to me that although she is proud of her soldier she doesn't want him to actually do any fighting. The last two lines of the song are where the answer is to be found, referring to her love and his smile.

"It would make any pauper feel happy
It would make any nightingale sing"

Answer: A bomb

The whole song is a litany of advice of how to build a good relationship. The principal theme being having no secrets from your partner. Steve Knightley writes in the notes that this is based on the advice he gave a person on the night before their wedding.

The relevant verse for the answer is:

"I'll have no secrets no place to hide away
I'll never build this house upon
A long forgotten wartime bomb
I pray we never face that blast
The broken home the shattered glass
Kept in the past"

Answer: Tyrant

Firstly the answer, the opening of the final verse is

"The maestro the conductor and the tyrant
Baton raised I look up from my score
And in my hands the orchestra falls silent
But you left before the curtain call"

A song of failures in relationships just as success appears to have been achieved.

A better description of this is found in the first verse, where the singer is told by his partner that they "loved the growing and the tending much more than the ending".

This is reminiscent of a Richard Thompson song, "Let it Blow", which is about a rock star who loves the "pursuit and the romance, but the details were more of a chore. When the bride's veil lifted, his mind soon drifted, at least that's what happened before".

Which has a similar theme to the song "Where is the Life that I Led" from the musical "Kiss Me Kate". In that song, the lyrics include; "The marriage game is quite all right, yes, during the day it's easy to play, but, oh, what a bore at night."

All showing that there are few new themes in songs, such ideas appear everywhere.

Answer: Sincerity

As the title of the song implies, it isn't the words that matter just the sounds that are important. As per the opening line; "You say one thing I hear another".

But the line that is asked for is in the couplet;

"I need the truth a little understated
Of all the virtues sincerity must be the most overrated."