Literature Lucky Dip Trivia Quiz

Answer: Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming, so well known for his 'James Bond' novels, wrote 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' for his son Caspar. Originally a successful racing car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang ends up in a run down garage where two children grow fond of it. On finding out that it is destined to be sold for scrap, they eventually persuade their father, the eccentric Caractacus Potts, to buy it. During their adventures they discover that the car can do magical things including changing itself into a power boat and flying.

The book was turned into a movie starring Dick van Dyke, which was one of the most popular movies of 1969.

Answer: Darling

J.M. Barrie had a brother called David who died in a skating accident the day before his fourteenth birthday. He and his mother thought of David as being a boy for ever more i.e. the little boy who didn't grow up. Peter Pan first appeared in the adult novel 'The White Bird', where he is only seven years old.

In 1904 Barrie wrote the play 'Peter Pan or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up', and following its success he extended the story and published it as a novel in 1911, under the title 'Peter and Wendy'.

Answer: Weaver

Silas Marner is a weaver who leaves his home town after being wrongly accused of a crime. Full of bitterness, he turns to money as his comfort and becomes a miser. One night he finds that his money is gone. The villagers try to comfort him but he sinks into depression. Later a baby girl, whose mother is dead in the snow, wanders into his house.

He calls her Hephzibah after his mother, although she is known to everyone as Eppie. Silas brings her up as his own and this humanises him and helps to bring him together with the community.

The novel was the third one from George Eliot, which was the pen name of Mary Anne Evans.

Answer: Daphne du Maurier

The story is set in Daphne du Maurier's home county of Cornwall in England, soon after the Second World War, and it appears in du Maurier's 1952 volume of short stories 'The Apple Tree'. There is an obvious parallel between the birds and the wartime enemy planes.

Although the story is Hitchcock's inspiration for the film, it is very different, and I urge you to read the book if you have not already done so. The build up of the tension is more subtle, and I find that my imagination paints the horror scenes far more luridly than the film does.

Answer: Rupert Bear

Enid Blyton has been a best selling children's author since the 1930s. As well as those mentioned above, she also created 'The Famous Five', 'The Secret Seven' and 'Malory Towers'. Since the 1950s her books have been increasingly criticized as elitist, racist, sexist and xenophobic, which to the modern reader they clearly are.

Some libraries refused to stock her books, and many schools banned them. The BBC had always refused to broadcast them, as they were considered to be without literary merit.

Despite all this Enid Blyton's work still sells today, and I for one am grateful to her for the 'Faraway Tree' series which I enjoyed so much as a child.

Answer: Lady Chatterley's Lover

'Lady Chatterley's Lover' was first published in 1928 in Italy, and then in 1929 in France and Australia. The full version was not published in the U.K. until 1960, when it became the subject of an obscenity trial. Lady Chatterley, whose husband is disabled and distant, has an affair with Oliver Mellors, the game keeper.

Although there was so much fuss about the sexual content of the book that is not really what it is about. It shows that a person cannot live fully when engaging either just the mind or just the body, but the two parts of a person need to be expressed.

Answer: St. Mary Mead

Miss Jane Marple is an elderly spinster who is good at solving murder mysteries. Her quiet and unassuming demeanour leads people (especially police officers) to think that she is just an interfering old busy body, and not take her suggestions seriously, but she is always proved right in the end.

She often stays at the houses of friends or goes on small trips paid for by her author nephew, which gives her the opportunity to come across more murders to solve.

Answer: Charles Darwin

'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life' was first published by Charles Darwin in 1859, and it caused much controversy because it stated that animals and humans had evolved from simple beginnings, and this contradicted the Bible story of Adam and Eve. Darwin's own wife Emma was a very religious woman and found it very hard that he had gone against the Bible in this way. People also found it insulting and ridiculous to suggest that humans are in anyway related to other primates.

There were cartoons in the newspapers, and much ridiculing of Darwin's theory of evolution.

Answer: David Copperfield

David Copperfield is Dicken's eighth novel and his favourite. His own miserable time at Warren's blacking factory is echoed in David's experiences at Murdstone and Grinby. David and Charles followed the same career pattern of becoming journalists and then authors. Dicken's early romantic feelings for Maria Beadnell are the model for David's love for Dora Spendlow.

It can also be noticed that his character has an inverse version of his own initials i.e. D.C. as opposed to C.D.

Answer: Napoleonic War

In 1812 the French under Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia. It was a major turning point, as it was the first major defeat for the French in the Napoleonic wars. The French troops had to retreat during the terribly harsh Russian winter, with little to eat as the Russians had burnt all the crops in the fields.

There are stories of soldiers sleeping inside dead horses for warmth. Less than half the troops returned to France. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote the very famous "1812 Overture", in which cannon can be heard and church bells ring out in celebration, to commemorate the Russian victory.