The Spectator

2025 Christmas quiz: the answers

issue 13 December 2025

Events, dear boy

1. Bryan Adams

2. MI6

3. Beijing

4. Jellyfish

5. Vladimir Putin

6. To feed its lions and tigers

7. Afghanistan

8. In Lake Balaton, Hungary

9. Bats

10. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister

Capital fun

1. Topeka

2. Cair Paravel

3. Albany, Georgia, has more than 66,000; Albany, California more than 19,000.

4. Borchester

5. Casablanca, Tangier, Fez, Marrakesh, Salé or Meknes

6. Lemuel Gulliver, in Lilliput

7. Kiel

8. The Emerald City

9. Castlebar

10. Strelsau

Royal flush

1. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who had briefly been called Mountbatten Windsor once he was no longer the Duke of York

2. Hinduism

3. The Duchess of Sussex

4. Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor)

5. The King

6. The Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Beatrice

7. The Princess Royal (Princess Anne)

8. Lichfield Cathedral

9. The Prince of Wales

10. Rafa Nadal, the tennis player.

Medium rare

1. Any of lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, yttrium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium and scandium

2. The Beatles

3. Kubla Khan

4. Alexander Pope (Epistle to Arbuthnot)

5. Milton’s Paradise Lost (Bk ii)

6. Juvenal (Satire VI)

7. Thomas Moore

8. George Wither

9. G.K. Chesterton (‘A Song of Defeat’)

10. Westminster Abbey

Good obits

1. Frederick Forsyth

2. Dame Joan Plowright

3. Connie Francis

4. Ozzy Osbourne

5. Marianne Faithfull

6. Lord Tebbit (Norman Tebbit)

7. Brian Wilson

8. Tom Lehrer

9. Biddy Baxter

10. Jim Lovell

Book labels

1. Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

2. Jane Austen (Emma)

3. Anthony Trollope (Orley Farm)

4. Henry James (English Hours)

5. P.G. Wodehouse (‘Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit’, in Very Good, Jeeves)

6. E. Nesbit (The Phoenix and the Carpet)

7. Charles Dickens (‘The Chimes’, in Christmas Books)

8. Margery Williams (The Velveteen Rabbit)

9. Coventry Patmore (The Angel in the House)

10. Wilkie Collins (‘Mr Lepel and the Housekeeper’ in Little Novels)

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