London Calling My Children Home Quiz

Answer: King Charles III

Buckingham Palace was acquired for the British royal family by George III in 1761. Princess Elizabeth gave birth to Prince Charles there on 30th November 1948 while his father, Prince Philip, was playing squash elsewhere in the palace grounds. The baby Prince Charles apparently looked like a "plum pudding", according to Prince Philip!

When Princess Elizabeth became queen in 1952, Prince Charles became the heir apparent at just three years old. In 2011, after over 59 years, he became the longest serving heir apparent to the British throne. He became King Charles III in September 2022 upon the death of his mother.

Answer: 1797

Mary Shelley is best known for her novel 'Frankenstein', which was published in 1818 when she was 20 years old. She was born in Somers Town, London, on August 30th 1797 to a feminist mother and a political philosopher for a father. Unfortunately, her mother died less than two weeks after she was born. Her father's politics influenced Shelley throughout her life and she became an advocate of political radicalism.

The liberal life Shelley led caused problems in the years before her death when at least three people tried to blackmail her for money. After years of illness, she died in 1851 from a brain tumour.

Answer: J M W Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner was clearly a gifted child and was accepted by the Royal Academy of Arts when he was 14. He started earning his living (mostly architectural drawings) while still studying. He appears to have been plagued with bouts of depression. Despite shunning the limelight, his nocturnal scenes and stormy skies helped lift landscape painting from bland romanticism into a highly valued art form.

Turner died of cholera in 1851, leaving a huge legacy of over 2,000 finished paintings and 19,000 drawings and sketches. Many of his works are housed in the great Art Galleries of the world.

Question by windrush.

Answer: 1934

Jane Goodall was born in London in 1934 and demonstrated a love for animals from an early age. In 1957, Goodall travelled to Kenya, which was where she met anthropologist and palaeontologist Dr Louis Leakey. Impressed by her knowledge, he hired her as an assistant. Goodall travelled to Lake Tanganyika to study chimpanzees in the wild in 1960, though the British authorities would only allow her to go when accompanied by her mother.

She made ground-breaking revelations about the social interactions between chimps, and the way in which they made tools.

Her work earned her a PhD candidacy at Cambridge University, despite not having a university degree.

Answer: Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse struggled with drug and alcohol abuse throughout her career. She died in 2011, aged 27. Though she had a turbulent personal life, her music won her many awards over the eight years that she was in the spotlight. Winehouse was nominated for eight BRIT awards, one of which she won. She also won six Grammys, an achievement for which she also earned a Guinness World Record.

After her death, the Amy Winehouse Foundation was set up to educate young people about substance abuse and support those who needed help.

Answer: Bob Hope

Bob Hope was born in Well Hall in London in 1903 to a stonemason and an opera singer. The family moved to the US in 1908 and as he grew up, he showed a talent for singing, dancing and comedy. Under the name Packy East, Hope had a short-lived boxing career. Show business, however, was where his talents truly lay. Over his 70 year career, Bob Hope worked on stage, radio, television, and film.

He passed away in California at 100 years old.

Answer: Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Hitchcock directed more than 50 feature films, including 'Rebecca', 'Rear Window', 'Vertigo', and 'Psycho'. My personal favourite was a wacky black comedy called 'The Trouble with Harry'. Over his distinguished six decade career, his films earned 46 Oscar nominations and six wins.

In the days before computer-generated imagery, Hitchcock was able to evoke painful suspense and sudden sheer terror, by leading his audience carefully with background music, symbols and situations evoking dread, and paring down the scenes to eliminate distraction. This true master died in Bel-Air, California in 1980.

Question by windrush.

Answer: Rome

John Keats (1795-1821) was born in Moorgate (which is part of the City of London), possibly at the inn his father managed. He is known as one of the most important representatives of the second generation of Romantic poets, to which Percy Bysshe Shelley and the notorious Lord Byron also belonged. "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn" are among the most famous of his works, written between 1818 and 1819 during his stay at Wentworth Place (now the Keats House Museum), in the London neighbourhood of Hampstead. Shortly afterwards, Keats - like his father and his two brothers - fell ill with tuberculosis, and was advised by his doctors to move to a warmer climate. He moved to Rome in the autumn of 1820, but the disease was far too advanced for him to recover, and he died on 23 February 1821. Like Shelley (who also died in Italy), he was buried in Rome's Protestant Cemetery, near the ancient city walls.

Question by LadyNym.

Answer: Alan Sugar

On 24 March 1947, Alan Sugar was born in Hackney, East London. His family lived in a council flat when Alan was a child. He built his fortune from the ground up, beginning by selling electrical items out of the back of a van. In 1968, he set up Amstrad (Alan Michael Sugar Trading) to sell car antennas and intercoms, among other things. Alan Sugar has received titles for his contributions to business.

In 2000, he was knighted and nine years later, he became a life peer, becoming Baron Alan Sugar.

Answer: Rio Ferdinand

Rio Ferdinand was born in Camberwell in South London. Born 7th November 1978, he played football in various youth teams before joining West Ham - a London team - in 1995. He played for a few different clubs before spending a large chunk of his career at Manchester United. Rio began his international career aged just 19 in November 1997.

At the time, he was the youngest defender to play for England. Rio retired from football in 2015. After leaving the profession, he became a frequent face on TV. For a time, he was a pundit for BT Sport's football coverage, but also featured in adverts and documentaries.

After the death of his wife, he spoke about bereavement in a BBC One documentary called "Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum and Dad".