A Pilgrim's Common Bond Trivia Quiz

Answer: General Patton

Affectionately known as "Old Blood and Guts", George S. Patton commanded US troops in both the Mediterranean and Western Europe during World War II. His uncompromising leadership style and his aggressive tactics meant that he was loved by his men and feared by the enemy.

This fear was so great that Patton was effectively used to distract the German troops and keep them in Calais, in expectation of Patton leading an invasion force there, whilst the real invasion was happening at Normandy.

Answer: Knight

Geldof was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1986. This entitles him to use the letters "KBE" after his name but does not permit him to be called Sir Bob as he is not a citizen of a country where the UK monarch is head of state.

The award was bestowed upon him for his work in Africa, helping those afflicted by famine, especially in Ethiopia. He organised the recording of the charity single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in 1984 - a song that became the largest selling single of all time in the UK at the time. The following year he arranged the charity concerts of Live Aid, held in London and Philadelphia and broadcast live around the world.

Answer: Lee Miller

Miller's first professional connection with Vogue was as a model on their pages. She was a highly sought after subject in the 1920s having got her big break when publisher Conde Nast save her from being hit by a car in Manhattan. After modelling, she moved to Paris to work with surrealist artist Man Ray, who became her lover. Several of Ray's famous works, using the solarisation technique, were in fact shot by Miller.

At the outbreak of World War II, Miller was living in London, England with another surrealist artist, Roland Penrose. As the bombs fell on the city, Miller used her camera to document the experiences of people during the Blitz. In her role as Vogue's war photographer she took a remarkable series of photographs of women in wartime which, although she was rarely exhibited during her lifetime, have been lauded in retrospective exhibitions in multiple cities around the world.

Answer: Christopher Reeve

Christopher Reeve achieved overnight fame after being cast in the titular role in Richard Donner's "Superman" (1978). Three sequels followed and Reeve also had successes with movies such as "Deathtrap"(1982) and "The Remains of the Day" (1993).

In 1995 he suffered life-altering injuries when he fell from his horse during an equestrian event, fracturing two vertebrae and leaving himself permanently paralysed from the neck down. Showing remarkable fortitude, and replicating the intensity of the exercise regime that turned him into Superman, Reeve managed to recover some sensation in his body and the ability to make small movements.

As well as pushing himself physically, Reeve threw himself into activism for disability rights. He helped to get law passed that would extend benefits to those with lifelong conditions, even when they returned to work, and he lobbied for funding for stem cell research into regenerating damaged spinal cells.

Answer: James Cook

James Cook first took to the seas as an apprentice in the merchant navy as a teenager. After rapidly progressing through the ranks he voluntarily started at the bottom of the ladder again when he joined the Royal Navy in his mid-20s, signing up to serve in the time of the Seven Years' War (which in fine British tradition, in fact lasted nine years). His calculated gamble paid off because he was given command of a Navy vessel within a couple of years of joining.

It was Cook's surveying and cartography skills that enabled him to become the great explorer that he is famous for being. During the Seven Years' War, he charted much of the Atlantic coast of North America and these maps were noted by the Admiralty who decided to send Cook to the South Pacific to search for Terra Australis, the mythical great southern continent. In the course of three journeys, he would make the first European landfall in Australia, chart the coastline of New Zealand and discover many islands previously unknown to European countries. On the last of the three journeys, Cook would be killed in Hawaii, when trying to abduct the king, in order to ransom him for items stolen from Cook's party by Hawaiian citizens.

Answer: Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin's contribution to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was sadly unheralded in her lifetime. The data calculations produced by her X-ray crystallography work were crucial to the establishing of the correct structural model for the molecules.

When it came to the presentation of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1962, it was Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick and James Watson who took the award. Franklin's role in their discovery went unrecognised. The Nobel prize rules meant that the award could not be given posthumously and sadly, Franklin had passed away four years previously from cancer at the age of just 37.

Answer: Shipman

"Gavin and Stacey" was a sitcom starring Mathew Horne and Joanna Page as the titular couple. Written by James Corden and Ruth Jones who co-starred as the couple's friends Smithy and Nessa, it told the story of two people who fall for each other over the phone at work and decide to meet, despite living hundreds of miles apart. Their courtship was a success (eventually) and they married soon after.

One of the in-jokes of the series is that many of the main characters share their surnames with serial killers. Stacy and her Uncle Bryn have the surname West (for Rose and Fred West), Gavin's family is Shipman (for Harold Shipman) and Pete and Dawn, friends of Gavin's parents, are the Sutcliffes (for Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe).

Answer: Monk

"Monk" ran for eight seasons from 2002 to 2009 with a final TV movie that was broadcast in 2023. Tony Shalhoub played the titular character, a former San Francisco detective with crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder that had been hugely exacerbated by the murder of his wife. After overcoming his fear of leaving his home, Monk started to help his old force to crack complex murder cases, all the while trying to solve the case of his own wife's murder.

Shalhoub was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series at the Emmys for all eight seasons of "Monk", winning three times. The role also saw him win a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Answer: Jim Parsons

Parsons made his debut as theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper in "The Big Bang Theory" in 2007. The show would run for 12 seasons and turn Parsons into a huge star. Cooper was highly intelligent but socially inept and a lot of the humour of the show came from his failure to follow behavioural norms, such as an inability to understand or recognise sarcasm, his propensity to rant and his constant desire to get his own way.

Parsons received four Primetime Emmy awards and a Golden Globe for his performance in the series, which ended in 2019.

Answer: Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was the author of the late 14th century work, "The Canterbury Tales". Among the tales told were;

The GENERAL Prologue: An introduction to the overall story of the tales, the pilgrimage from an inn in Southwark to visit the shrine to St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. It explains that each character making the pilgrimage will tell a tale along the journey to Canterbury and one more on the way back.

The KNIGHT's Tale: The most high born of the pilgrims, the knight goes first and tells a chivalrous tale of two knights who compete for the love of a young woman.

The MILLER's Tale: A bawdy tale of a carpenter cuckolded by his clerk told by the miller who is drunk at the time. The tale broadly mirrors that of Joseph and Mary, as Joseph is a carpenter cuckolded by God.

The REEVE's Tale: The reeve, having been a carpenter himself, responds to the miller with a story of two young men who take revenge on a grumpy miller by sleeping with his wife and stealing his bread.

The COOK's Tale: A short tale, probably unfinished, covering a similar tale to that told by the reeve.

The FRANKLIN's Tale: A story concerning honour and nobility between a married couple and an ardent suitor who pursues the wife when the husband is away.

The SHIPMAN's Tale: A bawdy comic tale about a monk who borrows money from a merchant in order to give to the merchant's wife so that she will sleep with him.

The MONK's Tale: The monk aims to tell 100 brief stories of tragedy such as the fall of Lucifer, the death of Julius Caesar and that of Peter I of Cyprus. The knight interrupts him after this last tale, meaning that the monk recounts just 17 of his tales.

The PARSON's Tale: A tale told in prose because the parson is unable to rhyme. The story is one of penitence, possibly that of Chaucer himself for any offence he may have caused in the telling of the previous tales on the journey.

Chaucer himself takes part in the pilgrimage and acts as the narrator of the tales. The work was not completed at the time of his death in 1400 but it is believed that the Parson's Tale was intended to be the final tale on the journey to Canterbury. The tales that were to be told on the return to Southwark were never written.