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Post-War British Literature Trivia Quiz

After the Second World War there were important changes in British Literature. There were the Angry Young Men. There were the voices from the ex-Empire. See for yourself what you still remember of those recent 'past times'.

A multiple-choice quiz by flem-ish. Estimated time: 5 mins.

Author
flem-ish

Time
5 mins

Type
Multiple Choice

Quiz #
56,881

Updated
Dec 03 21

# Qns
10

Difficulty
Tough

Avg Score
5 / 10

Plays
1314

One at a Time - Single Page - Timed Game

Question 1 of 10

1. In whose works were these important 'localities': Fernhill; Laugharne; Rhosili; Cwmdonkin Park; Swansea Bay? Hint

W.H. Auden

Dylan Thomas

W.B.Yeats

T.S.Eliot

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Question 2 of 10

2. Where did Dylan Thomas have his 'Boathouse'? Hint

Llareggub

Carmarthen

Swansea

Laugharne

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Question 3 of 10

3. Who was the author of such successful novels as 'Memento Mori' (1959); 'The Ballad of Peckham Rye' (1960); 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' (1961); 'The Girls of Slender Means' (1963)? Hint

Iris Murdoch

Margaret Drabble

Muriel Spark

Margaret Atwood

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Question 4 of 10

4. Which of these Wilsons was the 24-year-old author of a successful analysis of the post-existentialist 'Outsider' in literature? Hint

Lanford Wilson

Angus Wilson

Colin Wilson

August Wilson

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Question 5 of 10

5. Which of these authors might with some reason be called the 'voice of London's suburbia'? Hint

John Betjeman

Philip Larkin

Seamus Heaney

Roger Mc Gough

6. Who wrote the successful play 'Educating Rita', about a low-brow woman who takes an interest in poetry and subsequently gets involved in an affair with a deteriorating alcohol-addicted professor of literature? Hint

Alan Ayckbourne

Allan Sillitoe

David Storey

Willie Russell

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Question 7 of 10

7. Who reigned over post-war British poetry at Faber and Faber, Russell Square, while Dylan Thomas reigned over the pubs around Charlotte Street till he died in 1953? Hint

W.B. Yeats

T.S. Eliot

W.H. Auden

Walter de la Mare

NEXT>

Question 8 of 10

8. Who wrote an eleven-volume sequence of novels in which we follow Lewis Eliot from lower middle class Leicester to Cambridge, then London and finally 'the Corridors of Power'? Hint

Anthony Powell

Philip Larkin

William Cooper

C.P. Snow

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Question 9 of 10

9. Which of these Theatre Companies first had Aldwych, then the Barbican, as its homebase? Hint

Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop

National Theatre Company

Arnold Wesker's Centre 42 project

Royal Shakespeare Company

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Question 10 of 10

10. The patriotic 'Festival of Britain' in 1951 and the widely-televised Coronation of QEII (1953) were followed by a 'shocking' performance of a play by John Osborne 'Look Back in Anger'. Who was its hero? Hint

Joe Lampton

Jimmy Porter

Pip Thompson

Sergeant Musgrave

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. In whose works were these important 'localities': Fernhill; Laugharne; Rhosili; Cwmdonkin Park; Swansea Bay?

Answer: Dylan Thomas

Thomas was born at Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea in 1914. Fernhill is in Carmarthenshire. Rhosili is on the Gower Peninsula.

Yeats, Eliot and Auden are sufficiently well-known not to require any 'footnotes'.

2. Where did Dylan Thomas have his 'Boathouse'?

Answer: Laugharne

Llareggub is a fictional place that only exists in 'Under Milkwood', which will be the more readily understood if you read the name from back to front.

Carmarthen and Swansea are Welsh towns near to Thomas' own Laugharne.

3. Who was the author of such successful novels as 'Memento Mori' (1959); 'The Ballad of Peckham Rye' (1960); 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' (1961); 'The Girls of Slender Means' (1963)?

Answer: Muriel Spark

Margaret Drabble (b.1939) is well-known for 'the Garrick Year' (1964) and 'The Millstone' (1965). Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) wrote various quality novels among which are 'Under the Net' (1954); 'The Bell' 1958; 'A Severed Head' (1961).

Margaret Atwood is not British, but a Canadian author. She wrote novels such as 'Cat's Eye' (1988) and 'Alias Grace' (1996).

4. Which of these Wilsons was the 24-year-old author of a successful analysis of the post-existentialist 'Outsider' in literature?

Answer: Colin Wilson

Angus W. is the author of 'Hemlock and After' (1951) and 'Anglosaxon Attitudes' (1956). Lanford Wilson is a USA author, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979. August Wilson is an American playwright who was successful with 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' 1983. The Wilson who wrote 'The Outsider' in 1956 was COLIN Wilson.

5. Which of these authors might with some reason be called the 'voice of London's suburbia'?

Answer: John Betjeman

Mc Gough belonged to the Merseyside poets that had their hour of glory as the 'Mersey sound'. Larkin moved from Coventry to Hull and later to Oxford. Heaney is certainly not a voice from suburbia. Born in Belfast, he moved to the Irish Republic and is much more a countryside than a town poet. Betjeman's poem 'Slough' illustrates well enough why he has been linked with suburbia.

Answer: Willie Russell

Sillitoe took a strong interest in the working-class('Saturday Night and Sunday Morning'; 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner'). Storey took an interest in soccer ('This Sporting Life'). Alan Ayckbourne was successful with various light comedies. Willie Russell wrote the post-World-War-II version of Bernard Shaw's Liza Doolittle and Professor Higgins story.

It was made into a movie.

7. Who reigned over post-war British poetry at Faber and Faber, Russell Square, while Dylan Thomas reigned over the pubs around Charlotte Street till he died in 1953?

Answer: T.S. Eliot

Yeats, Auden and Walter de la Mare all were poets too, but T.S.Eliot was some kind of Cerberus at the entrance door of Britain's best-known poetry-publishing house. Fortunately for his reputation in wider circles, he also wrote the poems on which the Musical 'Cats' was based.

8. Who wrote an eleven-volume sequence of novels in which we follow Lewis Eliot from lower middle class Leicester to Cambridge, then London and finally 'the Corridors of Power'?

Answer: C.P. Snow

One of Snow's most successful volumes was 'The Masters'. The whole sequence of novels was called 'Strangers and Brothers', written from 1940 till 1970. William Cooper (b.1910) was the Leicester-born author of 'Scenes from Provincial Life'. Antony Powell wrote, from 1951 till 1975, a long sequence of books entitled 'Music of Time'. Coventry-born Philip Larkin wrote a couple of novels, too: 'Jill' (1946) and 'A Girl in Winter' (1947).

9. Which of these Theatre Companies first had Aldwych, then the Barbican, as its homebase?

Answer: Royal Shakespeare Company

Wesker's Centre was at the Round House, Camden. NTC's homebase first was the Old Vic, re-opened in 1963, then they got the National Theatre, opened in 1976. Joan Littlewood produced plays such as Shelagh Delaney's 'Taste of Honey', the musical 'Oh What a Lovely War' and various Brendan Behan plays.

Answer: Jimmy Porter

Pip Thompson is from 'Chips With Everything'. Sergeant Musgrave is from a play by John Arden. Joe Lampton is not from a play, but from the novel 'Room at the Top'.

Source: Author flem-ish

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