A Man Called Sevenoaks? People and English Towns Quiz

Answer: Nelson

Horatio, 1st Viscount Nelson (1758-1805) wrote this in a letter to Emma, Lady Hamilton, in March 1801. At the time, she was married to Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy to Naples, who did not seem unduly concerned about the tempestuous affair being conducted in his own back yard.

Nelson is a town in Lancashire, about 30 miles north of Manchester.

Answer: Hinckley

In March 1981, John Hinckley, Jr., attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in order to catch the attention of actress Jodie Foster. Least so he said. Hinckley had previously stalked President Jimmy Carter with a similar aim in mind, but had been apprehended and was sent home.

Hinckley is a town in south-west Leicestershire.

Answer: Ashford

Evelyn Ashford (b.1957) competed in five Olympic Games and won four gold medals
all told. Her naturally shy nature unfairly gave her the reputation of being cold and unfriendly.

Ashford is a town in Kent.

Answer: Wells

Alan Wipper Wells (b.1952) was the first Briton to win an Olympic 100m title since Harold Abrahams of "Chariots of Fire" fame in 1924. He cheerfully endured the constant and high-pitched vociferous encouragement of his wife and coach Margot from the grandstand whenever he was in action. One of his chief rivals, the Italian Pietro Mennea, called the quiet Scotsman 'The Beast'.

Wells, in Somerset, is usually said to be England's smallest city.

Answer: Leigh

Janet Leigh (1927-2004) was so affected when she saw her famous scene in "Psycho" that she avoided showers whenever possible for the rest of her life. When she did have to use them, she went to great lengths to ascertain that the room was secure.

There are at least nine towns in England called Leigh, the largest of which is in Greater Manchester.

Answer: Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) really needs no introduction. Though he bears the name of an English city, it is the Welsh who claim him as a distant relation. But somehow Abraham Fishguard doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Answer: Warwick

Dionne Warwick (b. 1940) had the original surname Warrick, pronounced like the Midlands town. However, when she changed it to 'Warwick', spelled like the Midlands town, everyone called her 'War-Wick'.

Answer: Grantham

Leslie Grantham (b. 1947) returned to "Eastenders" in 2003 as Dirty Den growling "Hello, Princess" in front of 17 million faintly horrified viewers, but departed in early 2005 under something of a cloud in the wake of his 'bravura' performance on a not-entirely-secure webcam.

Grantham, Lincolnshire is famous for giving the world Margaret Thatcher.

Answer: Telford

Thomas Telford (1757-1834) was a brilliant Scottish all-rounder who built canals and bridges as well as roads. Were it not for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Telford would probably be remembered as Britain's greatest civil engineer.

Telford, Shropshire, was named in the great man's honour when it was laid down as a New Town in 1968, so is unlike all the other towns in this quiz inasmuch as the man came along first.

Answer: Bakewell

Frank Muir was the man who gave journalist and TV presenter Joan Bakewell (b. 1933) her well-known nickname. Bakewell, Derbyshire is famous for its tarts. It's possible that Bakewell is grateful to Muir for not going down the more obvious culinary route...

Answer: Hanley

Cool blonde Jenny Hanley (b. 1947) got boys switching over from 'Blue Peter' to ITV's 'Magpie' in droves in the mid-1970s. She made a brief appearance as one of Blofeld's conscienceless girls in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". Her Mum played John Gregson's wife in the London-to-Brighton comedy "Genevieve" and her brother Jeremy suffered the ignominy of a General Election defeat by a Liberal Democrat in 1997. Her dad was the actor Jimmy Hanley. Talented bunch.

Hanley is one of the 'Five Towns' in the Staffordshire Potteries.

Answer: Chichester

Sir Francis Chichester (1901-72) was knighted at Greenwich with the sword of another great sea-going Devonian, Sir Francis Drake, after completing his solo non-stop round-the-world voyage in the yacht Gypsy Moth IV in 1967. Sir Francis was the first non-dead non-royal to feature on a British postage stamp. Though admittedly, he is exceptionally tiny on it, sailing his boat.

Chichester is the chief administrative town of West Sussex.

Answer: Hull

Rod Hull (1935-99) spent much of his early career in Australia where he perfected his puppet Emu. His demise, which has entered British folklore, proved that he was no more designed for flight than it was.

Hull, strictly speaking, is Kingston-upon-Hull, a port city on the north side of the Humber estuary.

Answer: Boston

Tiger Bay's Billy Boston (b 1934) was the first black player to be selected in a Great Britain rugby league touring party. Black and white film clips of Billy clearly show his breathtaking speed and slipperiness. Having now retired as landlord of Wigan's famous Griffin pub, Billy is still to be seen in the West Stand at Central Park, watching the team for which he once played with great distinction.

Boston is one of Lincolnshire's larger towns.

Answer: Hastings

Gavin Hastings (b. 1962) won 61 international caps for Scotland, four fewer than his little (well, littler...) brother Scott. Big Gav came to do a signing session at the Cardiff bookshop where I used to work and was strikingly professional, being patient, friendly and humorous with everyone.

Hastings in East Sussex is near the site of the battle at which Harold II, last Saxon King of England, went down fighting in 1066.

Answer: Kendal

Felicity Kendal was born in 1946 into an acting family and came to prominence in the 1970s sitcom "The Good Life" as girlish suburban housewife Barbara Good, who my dad quite liked but who my mum wanted to strangle. In 2007, she appeared on TV in the gardening/murder series "Rosemary & Thyme".

Answer: Durham

Judith Durham (b. 1943) and her band The Seekers were hired as onboard entertainment on a liner sailing to England in 1964 with the object of doing the return trip a few months on. Four years and eight UK Top 10 hits later, the group disbanded and Judith finally made it home to Oz, where she married an English pianist.

Durham is an ancient cathedral city in the north of England.

Answer: Washington

Denzel Washington (b.1954) was partly inspired to go into show business by the powerful pulpit performances of his father, a Pentecostalist minister in Mount Vernon, New York state.

Washington, Tyne & Wear, is not, of course, the only well-known Washington on the planet. There's one in West Sussex too.

Answer: York

Alvin York (1887-1964) must have thrown his status as conscientious objector into some doubt on October 28, 1918, when he stormed a German stronghold in the Argonne Forest, using his backwoods marksman skills to kill at least 20 Germans and capture over a hundred others.

He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts. Warfare wasn't the only thing to which York conscientiously objected. When a feature film of his story was proposed, he refused to give his permission until he got a guarantee that Gary Cooper would play the lead role.

The 1941 film, "Sergeant York", still stands up pretty well.

Answer: Milton Keynes

The poet John Milton (1608-1674) became completely blind in the mid-1650s and had to dictate his work. This is the famous final line of the sonnet "On His Blindness".

What exactly economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was referring to when he wrote this to a friend in 1917 is a matter of conjecture, but we can only assume that the pressures of helping to run a wartime economy combined with any intelligent person's natural loathing of those in government led him to this outburst.

Contrary to popular belief, the Buckinghamshire New Town of Milton Keynes was named for neither the poet nor the economist.