Events, dear boy
In 2024:
1. Twenty-two tons of what were stolen from Neal’s Yard in London?
2. Down which steep, grassy hill in Gloucestershire was a Double Gloucester cheese wildly pursued by competitors?
3. Which film from 1964 had its classification changed from U to PG because the eccentric character Admiral Boom exclaims: ‘We’re being attacked by Hottentots!’
4. How did the black horse Quaker and the grey Vida attract wide attention?
5. A dental plate with seven false teeth set in gold was bought at auction for £23,184. To whom had it belonged?
6. Which London gallery escaped harm when a fire broke out in Somerset House?
7. In which European capital did the 17th-century building that had housed the stock exchange burn down, its 180ft spire plunging into the flames?
8. A bronze statue of which woman comedian was knocked down by a taxi in Bury, Lancashire?
9. Nasa launched the Europa Clipper spacecraft, due to reach a moon orbiting which planet in 2030?
10. Who ended his campaign to become president of America and endorsed Donald Trump after revealing how he had dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park, New York?
You don’t say
In 2024, who said:
1. ‘Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are two cheeks of the same backside and they both got well and truly spanked tonight.’
2. ‘Galloway is repulsive. He always has been… I’ve known him since 1983 and he is repellent.’
3. ‘Well Charlotte didn’t like it the first time. I got floods of tears, so I had to shave it off. And then I grew it back. I thought, hang on a second, and I convinced her it was going to be OK.’
4. ‘One final thought, from Caractacus Potts, and that is from the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success. So thank you very much everybody, and good night.’
5. ‘To the country I would like to say first and foremost I am sorry.’
6. ‘I call again for immediate ceasefire in Gaza; the return of the sausages.’
7. ‘We’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to deal with, with, with. The Covid. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with… what if we finally beat Medicare.’
8. ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’
9. ‘Members of the House of Commons, estimates for the public services will be laid before you. My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, other measures will be laid before you. I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon your counsels.’
10. ‘The premature disclosure of the contents of the Budget has always been regarded as a supreme discourtesy to the House.’
Not just for Christmas
1. Which novelist and poet wrote:
‘I live here: Wessex is my name:
I am a dog known rather well:
I guard the house but how that came
To be my whim I cannot tell.’
2. Boots, a black Aberdeen terrier, narrates which book by Rudyard Kipling?
3. Which Victorian novelist owned a spaniel called Timber and a mastiff called Turk?
4. Near Lincoln Cathedral stands G.F. Watts’s statue of a Siberian wolfhound Karenina next to which poet?
5. Name the Elizabethan author of a work on lavatories called The Metamorphosis of Ajax, who put a portrait of his dog Bungy on the title page of his translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.
6. Which poet wrote in a letter of her Newfoundland called Carlo: ‘You ask of my Companions. Hills – Sir – and the Sundown – and a Dog – large as myself, that my Father bought me – They are better than Beings – because they know – but do not tell.’
7. Which poet, whose Great Dane was being looked after by Lord Orrery, sent him these lines on her death:
‘Ah Bounce! ah gentle Beast! why wouldst thou dye,
When thou had’st Meat enough, and Orrery?’
8. Which poet’s dog Pepper was given to him by Sir Walter Scott?
9. Which designer and socialist was, according to Rossetti, ‘busily painting his first picture’ in 1857, ‘Sir Tristram after his illness in the Garden of King Mark’s Palace Recognised by the Dog he had given Iseult’?
10. ‘Except to the eye of love, one Aberdeen terrier looks very much like another Aberdeen terrier, sir,’ says who to whom in the story ‘The Episode of the Dog McIntosh’ by whom?
Annual royalties
1. In January, Queen Margrethe announced on television that she was abdicating on the 52nd anniversary of her accession. In which country did she reign?
2. In August, Princess Märtha Louise, 52, who says she is a clairvoyant, married Durek Verrett, a black man from California, 49, who says he is a shaman. Of which country is her father king?
3. Empress Masako, on a state visit to Britain with Emperor Naruhito of Japan, wore a mask in the open carriage with the Queen because of what allergy?
4. A horse sent which member of the British royal family to hospital for a few days with concussion?
5. Which member of the royal family, dressed in Wimbledon purple, presented the men’s singles trophy to Carlos Alcaraz?
6. In which city did a senator shout at the King: ‘This is not your land, you are not my King’?
7. Which member of the royal family recalled: ‘When I was very small, my mother started talking about homelessness, much like I do now with my children on the school run’?
8. What memento from the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh was sold in November for £2,200 by a Colchester auctioneer?
9. This year, who became the first member of the royal family to visit Ukraine?
10. The King visited Forsinard railway station, Sutherland, used as a visitor centre by which conservation charity of which he is patron?
Fond farewells
1. Who had played Private Pike in Dad’s Army (often called ‘stupid boy’ by Captain Mainwaring) and died aged 77?
2. Who won an Oscar in 1969 for the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and died aged 89?
3. Who had written Superwoman in 1975, and died aged 91?
4. Who was defence secretary during the Falklands War and during a television interview was called by Robin Day a ‘transient here-today-and-gone-tomorrow politician’?
5. Who was the author of the Shardlake series of historical novels, and died aged 71?
6. Name the singer who topped the charts in 1962 with ‘I Remember You’, and died aged 86.
7. Who was the broadcaster who aired the merits of the 5:2 diet, and was found dead, aged 67, on a Greek island after going for a walk?
8. Name the Cambridge philosopher and for more than 20 years opera critic of The Spectator who died aged 88.
9. Who died aged 94 after giving his name to a boson theoretically conceived in the 1960s and discovered in 2013?
10. Name the statistician who with Tony Lewis was behind a method of setting batting targets in rain-affected cricket matches, and died aged 84.
Unwrapping the clue
Match the authors with the quotations from their Christmas detective stories: Dorothy L. Sayers; G.K. Chesterton; Arthur Conan Doyle; Agatha Christie; P.D. James; Ngaio Marsh; Nicholas Blake; Margery Allingham; Michael Innes; Edmund Crispin.
1. ‘People who do not feel amiable are putting great pressure on themselves to appear amiable! There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c’est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!’
2. ‘Well, my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree. Enough, you know the species.’
3. The recollection of that Christmas at Duke’s Denver had haunted him in nightmares, every night regularly, for the following 20 years. But it is possible that he remembered it with advantages.
4. ‘The facts are these: about four o’clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder.’
5. I’ll call it ‘The Mistletoe Murder’. Mistletoe plays only a small part in the mystery, but I’ve always liked alliteration in my titles. I have changed the names.
6. ‘Murder under the mistletoe – and the man who must have done it couldn’t have done it. That’s my Christmas and I don’t feel merry, thank you very much all the same.’
7. A powdering of snow had fallen and in the park the trees, bare and soot-begrimed, showed like frozen fountains of ebony. Every-where the eye saw silence.
8. The squat, shapeless snowman still had a face – a face almost as white as the snow that covered it, the dead, human face of someone who shouldn’t have been there at all.
John and Priscilla gave each other one frozen, terrified glance. Then they raced for the door and went pelting downstairs. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ John yelled. ‘Come quick! There’s someone inside the snowman!’
9. ‘The night of the 24th,’ said the Chancellor softly, ‘was cold and windy, and on Christmas morning there was snow. They found Bishop John Thurston lying in his bed. There were burns on his face, and he had died of suffocation. There was no sign of a struggle, but his mouth was full of hair.’
10. They went into the second room on the left-hand landing. It was a large room, very spacious and well-proportioned. The walls, the carpet, and the narrow bed, were white. He saw only one picture and very few ornaments, but on the mantlepiece sparkled a little glass Christmas tree with fabulous glass flowers growing on it.
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