War Poetry through the Ages Trivia Quiz

Answer: Battle of Maldon

This poem is simply called "The Battle of Maldon". The Battle of Maldon was fought in Essex, England on 10 August, 991. The better-known Battle of Hastings was actually fought in Battle on the 14th of October, 1066. Also fought in 1066 was the Battle of Fulford, near York, England, on the 20th of September. Finally, the Battle of Brunanburh was fought in late 937 in Northumberland, England.

Answer: Second Boer War

This poem is called "Bridge-Guard in the Karroo". Not everybody knows that there were two Boer wars. I certainly didn't. The first one lasted a year, from 1880-1881; the second from 1899-1902. When people mention the Boer War, they're usually talking about the second one. Both were fought in South Africa.

Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936] was born in Bombay [Mumbai], India, and is best-known for his novel "The Jungle Book", and his short story "The Man who would be King". He was the first English writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1907, and to this day he remains the youngest recipient; he was 42 when he was awarded his Nobel Prize.

Answer: Vietnam War

This poem, entitled "A Vow", was written about the Vietnam War. American involvement in it lasted from 1965-1975.
Allen Ginsberg, (1926-1997), was an American poet, born in New Jersey, who is considered to be at the forefront of The Beat Generation. He started writing letters to the New York Times about WWII and workers' rights when he was just a teenager. For the rest of his life, which was centred around San Francisco, Ginsberg was a controversial activist, both for political reform and in gay rights, and an anti-Vietnam protester of note.

Answer: World War One

McCrae wrote this poem, "In Flanders Fields" during World War One, and sent it home to his girlfriend. WWI lasted from 1914-1918.
We've always been proud of John McCrae here in Southern Ontario, as he was a local boy, (1872-1918). He served in the artillery during the Second Boer War, then came home and studied medicine at the University of Toronto. In WWI he was in charge of a field hospital in Belgium, which is where he died, of pneumonia and meningitis.

Answer: Battle of Blenheim

The Battle of Blenheim [Blindheim], in Bavaria, Germany, was part of the War of the Spanish Succession, and it destroyed King Louis XIV of France's plans to dominate Europe. It was fought on 13 August, 1704. The Duke of Marlboro was John Churchill, an ancestor of Winston Churchill. Robert Southey (1774-1843), who wrote this poem called "The Battle of Blenheim", was born in Bristol, England.

He grew up in the house of an eccentric aunt, and then attended Westminster School, from which he was expelled for starting a magazine called 'The Flagellant'.

After his years at Oxford, he wrote unceasingly and in all forms: poetry, plays, biographies, and histories. He eventually attained the post of England's poet laureate.

Answer: Battle of Flodden Field

"Edinburgh after Flodden" is a humorous first-person account of the Battle of Flodden Field. It happened on 9 Sept. 1513, in Northumbria, England, when an invading Scots army, led by James IV, attacked the English army, led by the Earl of Surrey. It was a dismal day for the Scots. William Edmounstoune Aytoune (1813-1865), an Edinburgh man, was a lawyer and editor of Blackwood's magazine, to which he contributed humourous poetry.

Originally, Aytoune had been expected to study law in London, but he ran off to study German in Germany instead, and when he resumed his law studies, they were in Edinburgh, where his father, also a lawyer, could keep an eye on him.

In 1832 Aytoune's first poems appeared; the subject matter was Poland, as he had a great interest in it at the time.

At one time he was a Professor of Literature at the University of Edinburgh and the Sheriff of Orkney Island, which is quite a commute.

Answer: World War One

This poem, "The Soldier", is my very favourite. It was written by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), an educated and handsome young man who had already had a nervous breakdown by time he headed off to war. To help cure his nervous condition, Brooke was sent on a world tour which took him to Canada, the United States, and the South Pacific. Rumour is rife that he fathered a Tahitian child whilst visiting the island. Brooke never saw battle. En route to the Dardanelles at the age of 28, he died on a troop ship due to blood poisoning from an infected insect bite.

He was hastily buried in the dark of night in an olive grove on the Greek Island of Scyros; lovers of his poetry still turn up to see his grave.

Answer: The Crimean War

Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" tells the story of a light-cavalry brigade in the Crimean War being led into a hopeless charge against the Russians at Balaklava, leading to the deaths of more than two-thirds of the British soldiers. This war lasted from 1853-1856, and was the war that made famous the nurse Florence Nightingale.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), was born, humbly, as a rector's son and one of 12 children. After a Cambridge education he became a poet of note; today he is best-known for his work "The Lady of Shalott". Queen Victoria greatly admired his poetry, and in 1850 he became poet laureate of Great Britain. Furthermore, in 1854, she created him Baron Tennyson, with lands that could be passed on to his sons; he was the first English writer to be raised to the peerage.

Answer: Franco-Prussian War

Rimbaud was not writing about the Napoleon everyone is thinking about, but of Emperor Napoleon III. The Franco-Prussian War lasted less than a year between 1870 and 1871 and was won decisively by the Germans, who gained the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was a brilliant poet who gave up writing after the age of 30, and shocked Paris with his openly homosexual affair with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, who later shot Rimbaud in a lover's quarrel. Rimbaud lived out his days in Ethiopia as a gun runner.

The pain of carcinoma on his right knee forced him to return to France, and Rimbaud died in Marseilles of complications following the amputation of his leg.

Answer: World War Two

The answer is in the poem - the nineteen hundred and forty nails refer to the year, at which time WWII was underway.
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was born to minor nobility in the north of England. Because of her spinal deformity, Edith's parents locked her into an iron frame; for this Edith and her brothers never forgave their parents, neither did they see them again during their adult lives, nor attend their funerals. Edith was a poet of note. She wrote in unusual rhythms with great technical skill; she also wrote two lives of Queen Elizabeth I and a novel based on the life of Jonathan Swift. She was a friend of Dylan Thomas, and helped publish the poetry of Wilfrid Owen after his death. In 1954, Queen Elizabeth II made her Dame Edith Sitwell, Daughter of the British Empire (DBE).