Answers to Christmas Questions

Below are the answers to the Christmas Questions set in last week's Spectator.

1. (a) Charles Augustus Fortescue in Belloc's Cautionary Tales.

(h) Alice in Alice in Wonderland. (c) Ophelia in Hamlet. (d) Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance. (e) Wordsworth's Peter Bell.

2. (a) India (0.75 in.). (h) Japan (3.97 gal.). (c) Burma and Thailand (0.266 oz., 0.529 oz., or 0.584 oz.) (d) South Africa (74 gal.). (e) Japan (35.58 sq. ft.). (f) Bengal (2,000 yds.). (g) Burma (8 gal.).

(h) Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico (1.72, 1.73 and 1.66 acres).

(i) Saudi Arabia (26.4 in.).

3. (a) Francoise Sagan. (b) Compton Mackenzie. (c) Rose Macaulay. (d) Hugh Sykes Davies. (e) Brendan Behan. (f) Alec Waugh. (g) Louise de Vilmorin. (h) Colin Wilson.

4. (a) The Auvergne. (b) Dorset. (c) Yorkshire. (d) Ayrshire.

(e) Rutland. (f) A Wiltshire Blue Veiny cheese or a full cream leaf cheddar. (g) Berry. (h) Bohemia. (i) Hungary.

5. (a) Jack (of Jack and Jill). (h) Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

(c) The frog ('Heigh ho! says Rowley'). (d) The maid of the king who was served with blackbird pie. (e) Gregory Griggs.

6. (a) Johann Strauss the younger's Die Fledermaus. (b) Verdi's Falstaff. (c) Donizetti's The Elixir of Love. (d) Puccini's Gianni Schicchi. (e) Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Rossini's Barber of Seville. (f) Verdi's La Traviata. (g) Donizetti's Don Pasquale. (h) Johann Strauss the younger's Die Fledermaus.

7. (a) All were sites of now defunct bishoprics. (h) Surnames of the Dukes of Devonshire, Manchester, Northumberland, Somerset and Westminster. (c) All have Saxon churches. (d) All are names of lightships off Eastern England. (e) All are early makes of cars.

(f) Names of corvettes used by Britain to man our two weather stations in the North Atlantic. (g) Names given to atomic piles.

(h) Cats from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot.

(i) Antibiotic drugs.

8. (a) Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. (b) The Small Back Room, by Nigel Balchin. (c) The Good Companions, by J. B. Priestley.

(d) Crome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley. (e) Troy Town, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. (f) The Club of Queer Trades, by G. K. Chesterton.

(g) The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith.

9. (a) Patrick Quentin. (b) Georgette Heyer. (c) Emile Gaboriau. (d) Christopher Bush. (e) Margery Allingham. (f) C. E. Hare.

10. (a) Josephine. (h) Lord Byron. (c) Jefferson. (d) Kaiser Wilhelm II. (e) Ovid. (f) The Emperor Henry IV or Pope Gregory VII. (g) Boswell. (h) Sir Philip Sidney.

11. (a) Saint-Saens. (b) Monteverdi. (c) Schubert. (d) Stravinsky.

(e) Offenbach. (f) Sullivan. (g) Dvorak. (h) Moniuszko. (i) Jacopo Peri. (j) Handel.

12. (a) Sir Thomas Bouch, 1878. (h) St. Bdndzet, 1177. (c) Apollo- dorus of Damascus, AD 106. (d) William Edwards. (e) Thomas Farnolls Pritchard (at Ironbridge). (f) Peter of Colcchurch. (g) John Rennie.

13. (a) Hobbes on geometry. (h) Oscar Wilde on the peerage. (c) Gibbon on London. (d) Lamb on New Year's Day. (e) Macaulay on Richard Steele. (f) Edgar Wallace on a highbrow.