Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. This author does a lot of magazine and newspaper work ("The New Yorker", "The Independent", "Believer"). His first bestseller was a memoir of his love affair with Arsenal FC, and several of his books have been filmed - one in 2002 with Hugh Grant, and another in 2000 with John Cusack. His 2005 novel is called "A Long Way Down". Who is he?
2. This writer can be introduced by a quote from one of his most famous books: "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it".
The work he is best known for started as a BBC Radio 4 series, in 1978. He died in 2001, and many of us still can't get over it. Who is he?
3. This author started out as a stand up comedian, and then went on to write for television ("Blackadder", "The Thin Blue Line"). He's worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber on stage musicals, and with Queen for "We Will Rock You", and has written several screenplays. And there was something else...what was it?...oh yes! Novels. Lots of novels, the first one being "Stark" in 1989. Who is he?
4. This author started his career as a barrister, and has used his experience of the law to good effect with his most famous character. He left the law to write plays, and published his first novel, "The Narrowing Stream", in 1954. He wrote a trilogy about the character Leslie Titmuss, but his masterwork is his plonk-swilling, Wordsworth-spouting barrister, the one who is married to "She Who Must Be Obeyed". Who is he?
5. This Irish author burst onto the scene with his 1987 novel, about a bunch of guys getting together to form an R&B band in Dublin. It was filmed in 1991, with Robert Arkins as Jimmy Rabbitte. He went on to win the Booker Prize in 1993, but at my house, he's famous as the author of "The Giggler Treatment", a rather - um - scatological children's book. His 2004 book was "Oh, Play that Thing", a continuation of the story begun in "A Star Called Henry". Who is he?
6. This next author doesn't really fit the 'modern' part of this quiz so well; he died in 1995 at the age of 73, but I just finished reading "One Fat Englishman" the other day, and had to include him. His first novel, "Lucky Jim", was published in 1954; he was well known as one of the Angry Young Men of the '50s. Who is he?
7. This author is also an actor ("Blackadder", "Jeeves and Wooster", "Wilde") and radio broadcaster (does the name "Donald Trefusis" mean anything to you?). He has written for newspapers and magazines (the "Listener" and the "Daily Telegraph"). His first novel was about a forged Dickens manuscript, his next about a (possible) saint among the English upper class. Then came time-travel, then a revenge tale... Who is he?
8. This author may be less well known than most of the others in this quiz. His 2000 novel won the Whitbread Prize, and was nominated for the Booker. It's a wonderful story of Manx-speaking smugglers, mad Victorian explorers, Tasmanian natives, and everything in between. Who is he?
9. This author has done a lot of writing for film, television and stage. One of his novels, "A Shock to the System", was filmed in 1990 with Michael Caine. He is primarily a mystery author, with three series.
One series is about actor Charles Paris - intermittently employed, intermittently alcoholic, intermittently married.
Another is about Mrs. Pargeter, the widow of a crime boss. She solves her mysteries with the help of her late husband's 'associates'.
The Fethering series has a couple of women amateur detectives in a seaside town.
Who is he?
10. This author has worked as a screenwriter, on such films as "Octopussy" and the 1973 version of "The Three Musketeers". He has written several books of memoirs and semi-memoirs of military life, and a few books based on the English-Scottish border. He gets his place in this quiz, however, for his series featuring a rogue and a scoundrel of Victorian times. This character is borrowed from an 1856 novel by Thomas Hughes, and has since taken on a life undreamed of by his creator. He has run away from, and wenched and bullied and lied his way through, every interesting event of the late 19th century (and there are a lot of them). Who is this author?
Source: Author
agony
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MotherGoose before going online.
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