2022 Christmas quiz – the answers

Verbals

1. Boris Johnson, on resigning as leader of the Conservative party

2. Liz Truss, on being elected leader of the Conservative party

3. King Charles, greeting Liz Truss for her first audience as prime minister with him

4. Sue Gray in her report on ‘Alleged gatherings on government premises during Covid restrictions’

5. President Joe Biden of the United States, of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, in a speech in Warsaw

6. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister

7. Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, in Parliament

8. Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Fratelli d’Italia party, who became prime minister of Italy

9. Liz Truss, as foreign secretary, on being asked whether Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, was ‘friend or foe’

10. President Emmauel Macron, to those refusing vaccinations

Royal prerogatives

1. Paddington Bear; marmalade sandwich

2. The NHS

3. The Earl and Countess of Wessex

4. As a Lady and as a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter

5. The Duchess of Sussex

6. The Royal Company of Archers

7. Crimond

8. The Queen’s Bargemaster

9. The Zulus

10. Norway

European flowers

1. The Caspian

2. The Ebro (at about 580 miles)

3. Austria

4. Kazakhstan

5. Budapest

6. The Po

7. Belarus

8. Lethe

9. Michael Drayton

10. William McGonagall

Initial difficulties

1. Gilbert Keith Chesterton

2. Thomas Stearns Eliot

3. Joseph Mallord William Turner

4. Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin

5. Clive Staples Lewis

6. William Schwenck Gilbert

7. Thomas Edward Lawrence

8. Edward Frederic Benson

9. Herbert George Wells

10. George Frederick Bodley

Exits

1. Sidney Poitier

2. Dervla Murphy

3. Lester Piggott

4. Mikhail Gorbachev

5. Sir David Butler

6. Jerry Lee Lewis

7. Bamber Gascoigne

8. Meat Loaf (Michael Lee Aday)

9. Vangelis (Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou)

10. June Brown

Herald angels

1. E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)

2. Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)

3. James Woodforde (Diary, 22 July 1777)

4. George and Weedon Grossmith (The Diary of a Nobody)

5. Coventry Patmore (The Angel in the House)

6. Daisy Ashford (The Young Visiters)

7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Confessions)

8. William Thackeray (Vanity Fair)

9. John Ruskin (Praeterita)

10. Flora Thompson (Lark Rise to Candleford)