These Are a Few of My Favourite (Childhood) Books Quiz

Answer: Anne of Green Gables

'Anne of Green Gables' was published in 1908 and has remained on best-seller lists ever since. I 'met' Anne when I was eight and have read and re-read all of Lucy Maud Montgomery's 'Anne books' over and over again. I still weep buckets when Matthew dies, even though I know it's going to happen!

I have to admit that I was not - and still am not - a big fan of 'The Secret Garden' or 'The Little Princess'. Too sentimental for my taste.

'Peter Pan', on the other hand, has long been a favourite of mine and I'm still mad at Disney for taking such liberties with J. M. Barrie's lovely story.

Answer: Geoffrey Trease

My favourite Trease book was 'Cue for Treason', which is set in Elizabethan England. Trease, bless him, never patronized his young readers but wrote rip-roaring adventures for their delight and edification. He was meticulous in his research and wrote over 100 books in his 63 year writing career.

The son of a Nottingham, UK wine merchant, Trease was still in his teens when he elected to pursue a career as a writer rather than entering the family business.

Neither Jane Austen nor Sir Walter Scott wrote for children (although I read their books before I hit my mid-teens).

Answer: Oliver Twist

I've been a Dickens fan for over sixty years. My favourite Dickens novels are 'A Christmas Carol', 'Oliver Twist', and 'The Pickwick Papers'.

Child orphans feature largely in Victorian and Edwardian fiction, and David Copperfield and Anne Shirley were both orphans. However, they did not fall in with thieves or get sold into virtual slavery as poor little Oliver did when Mr. Bumble the beadle sold him to Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker.

Tom Brown, of "Tom Brown's Schooldays', was not an orphan.

Answer: Enid Blyton

Prolific writer, indeed! Miss Blyton entertained millions of children over the decades by writing some 800 books. I was especially fond of her 'Adventure series - 'The Valley of Adventure', 'The Castle of Adventure' and so on.

Miss Blyton's books were about nice middle-class children who seemed to be able to function without too much interference from the adults in their lives. Mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles were generally confined to the background of Enid Blyton stories.

Lucy Fitch Perkins was an American author who wrote a series of books about twins from various cultures (e.g. 'The Dutch Twins', 'The Indian Twins', 'The Cave Twins' and so on). I read all her books between the ages of four and six! Frances Hodgson Burnett was the Anglo-American author of 'Little Lord Fauntleroy', 'The Little Princess' and 'The Secret Garden', all of which I found to be 'soppy'. Lucy Maud Montgomery was the Canadian writer who gave the world 'Anne of Green Gables', for which I give her my eternal gratitude.

Answer: Robert Browning

The recitation competitions were an offshoot of the elocution lessons I took as a child. I won my first competition at age eight with a spirited rendition of 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat' by Edward Lear, and years later I could still enthrall my young sons with my version of 'Jabberwocky', one of their bedtime favourites.

Browning had a particular gift for rhythms that reflected the subject matter - "How They Brought the Good News (from Aix to Ghent)' fairly gallops along, while 'My Last Duchess' has a sinister stillness that enhances the macabre story told in the poem.

Tennyson, Noyes and de la Mare also wrote great narrative poetry, as witness 'The Lady of Shallott' by Tennyson, 'The Highwayman' by Noyes, and de la Mare's short but powerful poem 'The Traveller'.

Answer: Aberystwyth

The oldest copy of the Mabinogion housed in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth dates from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (the transcription was started sometime in the 1290s and completed in 1350). It is known as 'Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch', which translates to 'The White Book of Rhydderch'. The National Library also has a copy of 'The Red Book of Hergest' ('Llyfr Coch Hergest') dating from somewhere between 1382 and 1410.

While the oldest written copies date from the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries they are definitely based on Welsh oral tradition and scholars surmise that some of the stories were circulated as far back as the Iron Age. Some of the later stories date from 1060, which means that the stories about Arthur contained in 'The Mabinogion' pre-date Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'Historia Regum Britanniae' which was written in 1182.

There are several translations available, and I'm pretty sure that lovers of fantasy will enjoy 'The Mabinogion'.

Answer: Twm Sion Cati

Twm Sion is Welsh for Tom Jones. Cati is the shortened version of Catherine, Twm Sion's mother. In Wales, there are only about 20 surnames and in order to keep all the Joneses, Evanses, Davieses, Prices, Pritchards and so on separate a descriptor indicating trade, status, personal characteristic, home or family gets added to the name, hence Twm Sion Cati. Unlike Robin Hood, Twm Sion was a real person who was born in Tredegar in Cardiganshire in the sixteenth century. He eventually married a well-to-do widow, turned from his wicked ways and became, of all things, a magistrate!

Owain Glyndwr (1354 or 1359-c.1416) was the last Welsh Prince of Wales. Rhys of the Hills and Maldwyn ap Gareth are figments of my imagination.

Answer: Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen broke new ground in her day by writing novels about ordinary people in ordinary situations. Her depiction of life in the ranks of the genteel in Regency England are honest and witty, and even today one can identify with Elinor and Marianne Dashwood of 'Sense and Sensibility' (although I always wanted to give Marianne a good swift kick for being a perfect ninny!), with the five Bennett sisters in 'Pride and Prejudice' (and who among us has not been enamoured of Mr. Darcy, the epitome of the strong, silent type), the managing, match-making Emma Woodhouse and her down-to-earth suitor Mr. Knightley in 'Emma', and wise Anne Elliot in 'Persuasion'.

Answer: Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott single-handedly made Scotland romantic! Oddly enough, one of his most popular novels, 'Ivanhoe', is not set in Scotland but in 12th century England which was still sorting out the differences between Anglo-Saxons and Normans.

In addition to novels, Scott wrote poetry and was regarded as one of the literary greats of the early 19th century.

I was also a great fan of Robert Louis Stevenson, another Scot who wrote terrific novels about Scotland. My favourites are 'Kidnapped' and 'The Master of Ballantrae'. I also devoured 'Treasure Island', the Stevenson novel that is probably best known.

John Buchan was a 20th century writer who served as Governor-General of Canada between the two World Wars. Buchan's best known book is the spy thriller 'The Thirty-Nine Steps'.

Robert Burns didn't write novels. He was a poet and Scots around the world revere him and celebrate Burns' Day every January 25th.

Answer: Dorothy L. Sayers

The first Dorothy L. Sayers book I read was 'Whose Body?', the detective novel that introduced Lord Peter Wimsey to the world. Sayers wrote 11 novels and 21 short stories featuring her aristocratic detective and one can detect in the progression of the novels Sayers' amorous feelings toward her creation! She even gives him a mate who graduated from Oxford (as did Sayers) and writes detective fiction. Despite the fact that the Wimsey novels are set in the 1920s and '30s and are, consequently, somewhat dated, they are still popular.

Miss Sayers, who was the daughter of a Church of England priest, was a producer of Religious Programming for the BBC for many years and also wrote religious plays, the best-known of which is 'The Man Born to be King'.

A gifted linguist, Miss Sayers' translation of Dante's 'Divine Comedy' is considered one of the finest extant. In order to do it justice she learned Mediaeval Italian.

While Miss Sayers was very devout, she was no proselytizer. One of my favourite droppings from her pen is a four-line verse that goes:

As I get older and older
And totter toward the tomb
I find that I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom.

That's a remarkable sentiment for a woman of her time.

Agatha Christie, another favourite from my younger years, was the undisputed queen of detective novel writers. I was never a big fan of Ngaio Marsh and whenever I can't sleep I pick up the only Marjorie Allingham novel I own and I'm in dreamland before I finish the first page!

Answer: Rudyard Kipling

When I was eight my Godfather gave me 'Puck of Pook's Hill' as a birthday present. The book was published in 1906 and features ten stories about some aspect or event of British history. The central characters are two children, Dan and Una, who, while rehearsing a scene from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' on Midsummer Eve, accidentally conjure up Puck who then introduces the stories - some of which are told by Puck and others told by protagonists in the stories. In 1910, Kipling followed-up with 'Rewards and Fairies', which includes two of his most famous poems - 'If' and 'The Way through the Woods'.

Puck's great line "You shall see what you shall see and you shall hear what you shall hear" became part of our family vocabulary.

Masefield was a poet (and one-time Poet Laureate of Great Britain) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best-known for his stories about Sherlock Holmes, another hero of my childhood. I had to read Thomas Hardy in high school and never connected with him or his characters. I find him unutterably dreary!

Answer: Charles and Mary Lamb

Charles (1775-1834) and Mary (1764-1847) Lamb were a brother and sister writing team. They produced 'Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare' in 1807 and it has continued to be the means by which children get their introduction to Shakespeare. In the preface, the Lambs indicated that they had reduced complicated storylines and translated the Bard's Elizabethan English into language that children could understand, but wherever possible they let Shakespeare's words speak for themselves so that children could learn to appreciate the beauty of his language.

Both the Lambs were literary lions in their day, but their private lives were anything but serene. Both suffered from bouts of mental illness - Charles suffered melancholia and was also an alcoholic, while Mary would nowadays be diagnosed as suffering from bi-polar disorder. She was subject to periods of deep depression, in one of which she killed her mother by stabbing her through the heart with a kitchen knife! (Evidently, living with the demanding and imperious Mrs. Lamb was no picnic.) Mary was judged not guilty by reasons of lunacy and was released into Charles' care.

Trivia note: "Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare" was first published by William Godwin, father of Mary Shelley, the author of 'Frankenstein'.

Answer: Three Men in a Boat

Jerome K. Jerome wrote 'Three Men in a Boat' shortly after returning from his honeymoon boat trip on the Thames. One assumes that it was in the interests of domestic harmony that Jerome replaced his wife Ettie in the book with his two good friends George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel, who are called George and Harris in the book, and by the dog Montmorency (who seems to have been the only crew member with any common sense at all!)

The book was published in 1889 and was an instant hit. In the year after publication the use of Thames River boats increased by 50% and the book was credited with boosting the Thames River Valley as a tourist attraction.

The other three titles in the list of choices were written by the irrepressible P.G. Wodehouse, creator of the immortal Bertie Wooster and his manservant Jeeves, and they're all funny and highly recommended.

Answer: The Wind in the Willows

Ratty is the character who delivers himself of this superb line.

Any child who has not had the pleasure of reading (or having read to him or her) 'The Wind in the Willows' by Kenneth Grahame has been short-changed! The adventures and ups and downs of Ratty (who is actually a water vole), Mole, Badger and Toad, and the various minor characters are pure delight and I have read and re-read the book with pleasure since I was about seven and was given the version with the wonderful illustrations by Arthur Rackham.

First published in 1908, the book has been in constant print and is truly a classic, and while Disney managed to muck up most of my childhood favourites ("Alice in Wonderland', 'Winnie The Pooh' and 'Peter Pan', to name only three), he did a reasonable job of bringing 'The Wind in the Willows' to the screen.

Answer: 'The Daughter of Time' by Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey (real name Elizabeth Mackintosh) was a Scot who abandoned a teaching career to write detective novels, and I'm glad of it!

I was 15 when I read 'The Daughter of Time'. It was Tey's last book, and it features her main detective character, Inspector Alan Grant. In the book, Grant is confined to hospital recovering from the serious orthopaedic effects of a fall suffered while chasing a criminal. Grant, unused to inactivity, is bored to death until his friend Marta, knowing his fascination with faces, brings him a collection of prints of historical figures who featured largely in mysterious historical happenings. One of the 'faces' is that of Richard III, and they mystery, of course, is deaths of the Princes in the Tower.

I won't spoil the book for you, but Grant sets about solving the mystery from his hospital bed, assisted by his sergeant and a young historian. Tey's research is superb and, to my mind, she successfully proves that Richard has been seriously maligned through the centuries.

The other three books in the list of choices also depict Richard in a sympathetic manner.