BBC Radio 4 Brain of Britain Ultimate Quiz Book. Russell Davies

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Quiz 3

      1. Exhibited in 1849, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s first major canvas The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin bore his signature, the date, and the letters P.R.B. What did P.R.B. stand for?

      2. Which prolific female novelist who died in the year 2000 was married twice, both times to men with the surname McCorquodale?

      3. What’s the name of the gorge, descending to more than 36,000 feet below sea level, that marks the lowest point of the Mariana Trench in the north-western Pacific, and is thus the deepest point anywhere on the Earth’s surface?

      4. The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice are among the works of art criticism by which writer, who died in 1900?

      5. Which writer, himself a noted theatre critic, defined a critic as ‘a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car’?

      6. Obtained from the tree of the species Quercus suber, what material forms the centre of the best-quality cricket balls?

      7. ‘Night-writing’ – a letter code devised in 1819 by the French army captain Charles Barbier for passing secret messages silently in the dark – gave rise to which form of communication still in use today?

      8. The words ‘Mistah Kurtz – he dead’, used by T. S. Eliot as an epigraph for his poem ‘The Hollow Men’, are taken from which novel first published in 1899?

      9. The same novel in turn inspired a movie of 1979, in which a character played by Dennis Hopper refers back to the final words of Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’. Which film is that?

      10. The Hungarian ballerina Romola de Pulszky married a dancer and choreographer in Buenos Aires in 1913, and published a biography in 1952 chronicling the latter years of her husband’s life. Who was he?

      11. Which Greek sculptor, active in the 5th century BC, created the huge Statue of Zeus at Olympia which was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and also supervised the friezes for the Parthenon which are now preserved as the ‘Elgin Marbles’?

      12. Which two seas are connected by the Suez Canal?

      13. Which American broadcaster, who died in 2009, used to sign off his news programmes with the phrase ‘And that’s the way it is’?

      14. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which character does Alice encounter sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah?

      15. In seventeenth and eighteenth-century London, Garraways, Jonathan’s and Lloyd’s were all famous what?

      16. How many oxygen atoms are there in a single molecule of sulphuric acid?

      17. Ansel Adams is a renowned name in which of the arts?

      18. Having written many of their biggest hit songs, including ‘Easy’, ‘Still’ and ‘Three Times A Lady’, the soul singer Lionel Richie left which group to pursue a solo career in the 1980s?

      19. What’s the common English name for the species of small bird whose taxonomic name is Troglodytes troglodytes?

      20. Which Arabic word meaning benefits or a source of improvement, has come to be widely used in Indian cookery to mean a mixture of spices – and can be preceded in familiar phrases by the words garam or tikka?

      21. In Mary Shelley’s novel, what forename did she give to Dr Frankenstein, the ‘Modern Prometheus’?

      22. How is the artist born in Crete in 1541, and named Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known?

      23. Which term, originally a nonsense word invented by Edward Lear, is now used for a three-pronged pickle fork, shaped like a spoon and with one sharp edge?

      24. A 22-storey triangular-shaped tower on the corner of Broadway and 23rd Street in Manhattan, built by the architect Daniel H. Burnham in 1902, is Manhattan’s oldest remaining skyscraper, and was added to the US National Register of Historic Places in 1979. By what name is it commonly known?

      25. The last recorded words of a certain British monarch were ‘My dear boy, this is death’. Who made this astute utterance, and then died, on 26th June 1830?

      26. The 19th century Edinburgh anatomist Robert Knox is said to have been the principal client of which notorious pair of Irishmen?

      27. Which two sports are named in the full title of the All-England Club at Wimbledon?

      28. CITES is an acronym for the agreement between nations sometimes referred to as the Washington Convention, regulating international trade in plant and animal species considered to be rare or at risk. What do the letters CITES stand for?

      29. The first ten amendments to the constitution of the United States, passed in 1791, are collectively known by what name?

      30. Which former child actor, whose best-known roles included Richie Cunningham in the teen comedy series Happy Days, became one of Hollywood’s top directors with successes such as Frost/Nixon, The DaVinci Code and Apollo 13 among his credits?

      31. What would or could result from a ‘casus belli’?

      32. Which three-word name is most commonly used in the UK for the game sometimes known as ‘Rochambeau’ in the United States, and as ‘Jan Ken Pon’ in Japan?

      33. What’s the equivalent decimal value of eight shillings and sixpence?

      34. In Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, what’s the full name of the wicked headmaster at the grim Yorkshire school Dotheboys Hall, at which Nicholas is employed as a schoolteacher?

      35. In which continent would you find Wilkes Land, Queen Maud Land, and Marie Byrd Land?

      36. Which famous sports team, founded in the late 1920s, originally featured members from a semi-professional team known as the Savoy Big Five?

      37. What name is given to the peninsula that forms the detached former northern portion of Lancashire, preserved in the name of a borough in what is now Cumbria?

      38. Which word is used to mean both a pidgin language which has become the native speech of a particular people, and a style of cuisine typical of New Orleans and the Mississippi delta?

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