Read the Book? Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Hurt

A work of fiction based on known facts, "I, Claudius" chronicled the political scheming, murder, depravity and madness within the Roman Empire's ruling families, as seen through the eyes of the stuttering Claudius.

Derek Jacobi took the title role of Claudius, Brian Blessed was Augustus and Patrick Stewart played Sejanus in this immensely popular presentation, which prompted a resurgence of interest in the novels.

John Hurt had played the part of Quentin Crisp in the 1975 TV presentation of "The Naked Civil Servant" and went on to star as John Merrick in "The Elephant Man".

Robert Graves, who described himself as primarily a poet, published "I, Claudius" in 1934 and "Claudius the God" in 1935. He died, aged 90, in 1985, at his home in Majorca

Answer: Brideshead Revisited

The eleven episode production starred Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder and Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte, the member of the landed gentry he meets at university. The two become friends, and Charles is introduced to Sebastian's decadent lifestyle as a member of the 1920s "Bright Young Things". The story is shown as a series of flashbacks by Charles Ryder, a World War Two Army officer billeted at "Brideshead Castle" which failing fortunes have taken from the Flyte family.

Scenes involving "Brideshead Castle" were actually filmed at Castle Howard in Yorkshire.

Arthur Evelyn St.John Waugh died in 1966 at the age of 62. "Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder" was first published in 1945.

Answer: Benedictine Monk

A Central TV production, with Derek Jacobi starring as Brother Cadfael, the 12th Century monk whose skills as a herbalist are often put to use in solving murders.

The setting for the novels and television series, was Shrewsbury Abbey in Shropshire, but filming took place on location in Hungary.

The author, Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters was one of a number of pseudonyms she wrote under) died in 1995 at the age of 82.

Answer: John Galsworthy

This television production coincided with the centenary of Galsworthy's birth. "The Forstye Saga" covered 50 years in the lives of the Forsyte family, showing the hopes, passions and pains of three generations, and is possibly best remembered for the brief and brutal rape scene between husband and wife Soames and Irene Forsyte, played by the unrelated Eric Porter and Nyree Dawn Porter.

John Galsworthy died in 1933 at the age of 65.

Answer: Roger Moore

Roger Moore was already a familiar face on British television after his starring role in the children's TV series "Ivanhoe", loosely based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott. He played Simon Templar from 1962 until 1969.

Simon Templar was a suave adventurer with a strong sense of justice. Hailed as a modern day Robin Hood, he would steal from wrong-doers and protect the needy: especially if they were young and beautiful women.

Leslie Charteris was born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin to a Chinese father and English mother, changing his name by deed poll in 1926. He introduced the character Simon Templar in his 1928 novel "Meet - The Tiger", but claimed the successful series began with his 1930 novella "Enter the Saint".

Leslie Charteris died, aged 86, in 1993.

Answer: Winston Graham

"Poldark" was set in 18th Century Cornwall, with Ross Poldark (played by Robin Ellis) meeting the urchin Demelza (played by Angharad Rees) when he returned home from war in America to discover that his father had died and his fiancee was due to marry. Plots included shipwrecks, prison rescues, and changes in the Poldark family fortune. The first episode of a new series of Poldark was broadcast in 2015.

The first Poldark novel was written in 1945.

Winston Mawdsley Graham died in July 2003, at the age of 93. He continued writing Poldark novels until shortly before his death.

Answer: The Darling Buds of May

The tax inspector who visited the large, rumbustious, pleasure loving Larkin family to investigate why they weren't paying tax never went back to his office. Instead he married the eldest daughter Mariette (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and became part of the happy Larkin brood, living in the heart of the Kent countryside. There were 20 episodes in the series.

Herbert Ernest Bates (commonly known as H E) died in 1974 at the age of 69. He claimed that inspiration for the books came from a chance encounter with a "Pa Larkin" character while on holiday in Kent. The first novel in the "Pa Larkin" series was published in 1958.

Answer: Blott on the Landscape

"Blott on the Landscape" is a typical Sharpe satire on bureaucracy, class values and greed. Local MP Sir Giles Lynchwood (played by George Cole) devised the scheme of a motorway as a means of ending his loveless marriage to Lady Maud (played by Geraldine James) with funds from the compulsory purchase of her family estate. Lady Maud, with the help of a few villagers affected by the motorway, vigorously opposes the scheme and sets up a safari park in the estate grounds. While Lady Maud's protesters fight bureaucracy, her fiercely patriotic foreign handyman and secret admirer, Blott (played by David Suchet), uses his secret cache of World War II weapons for a more direct fight against authority.

Tom Sharpe, who had made his home in South Africa, was deported from that country in 1961 for sedition. He wrote "Blott on the Landscape" in 1975 and died at the age of 85 in 2013.

Answer: Thomas the Tank Engine

Railway enthusiast and clergyman, Wilbert Vere Awdry, created his railway characters in 1942 as a diversion for his son during a childhood illness. The first in a series of twenty-six "Railway Series" books by Reverend Awdry was published in 1945 and the last in 1972, after which his son, Christopher Awdry, continued his work.

Thomas, the blue tank engine with friends including Annie, Clarabel and Percy, first appeared on ITV in 1984, with Ringo Starr as the first of a series of narrators. The actor Pierce Brosnan has been signed up to narrate three further series, starting in 2008.

Reverend Awdry was awarded an OBE in 1996, and died in 1997 at the age of 85.

Answer: Caroline Graham

Midsomer is a fictional English county with Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby of Causton CID (played by John Nettles) solving the myriad of creative murders that take place in its bucolic surroundings.

Caroline Graham first introduced Chief Inspector Barnaby in "The Killings at Badger's Drift", published in 1987. A Midlander, born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, she currently lives in Suffolk.