Q1

A British actress who has played Condoleezza Rice and an android; a German-born photographer of monochrome nudes; and a slave ship captain who became an abolitionist and hymn writer: why might they all feel the weight of their forebears’ reputation?

CLUES

- With a bit of thought you’ll gravitate to the right solution.

- This question was topical around the time of series 4 of the TV series Line of Duty.

Q2

Can you make the following rhyme: Ruslan and Lyudmila, Rodin’s Poet, Smollett’s Humphry and the people of Atahualpa?

CLUES

- Rodin’s Poet is better known by a different description.

- They wouldn’t all rhyme if an American English speaker said them.

A1

They might feel the weight because they are all named Newton; and weight is measured in newtons, the SI unit of force, named after the British scientist Sir Isaac Newton.

Cambridge-educated British actress Thandie Newton (b.1972) played Condoleezza Rice in W, Oliver Stone’s biopic of George W. Bush, and has more recently won awards for her role as the android Maeve Millay in the sci-fi TV drama Westworld. She was also DCI Roz Huntley in series 4 of Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty.

Photographer Helmut Newton (1920–2004) became best known for his fetishistic fashion photographs and iconic nudes, often in black and white.

John Newton (1725–1807) was press-ganged into the Royal Navy at the age of 18 and worked on slave ships before a religious conversion led to his being ordained and eventually working with William Wilberforce to achieve the abolition of slavery. He wrote a great many religious poems and hymns, including the words of ‘Amazing Grace’.

A2

The rhyming sound here is ‘-inka’, and the phrases in the question give us Glinka, Thinker, Clinker and Inca. (Clearly, these are not all satisfactory rhymes in American English.)

Ruslan and Lyudmila is an opera by Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka to a libretto by Valerian Fyodorovich Shirkov (with minor contributions by others) after Pushkin’s 1820 poem, first performed in St Petersburg in 1842.

When conceived in 1880 in its original size (approx. 70 cm) as the crowning element of The Gates of Hell, Rodin’s The Thinker was entitled The Poet. He represented Dante, author of the Divine Comedy, leaning forward to observe the circles of Hell. While remaining in place on the monumental Gates of Hell, The Thinker was exhibited individually in 1888 and thus became an independent work. Enlarged in 1904, its colossal version proved even more popular.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker is an epistolary novel by Tobias Smollett, published in three volumes in 1771, the year of his death.

Atahualpa (c.1502–33), thirteenth and last emperor of the Inca, was executed by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1533 – marking the end of the Inca empire.

Q3

In what way can an instrumental no. 1 hit of 1960, the capital city of Wyoming, a military helicopter and several light aircraft be said to commemorate the subjugated?

CLUES

- You may need native wit to see the theme here.

- Not just the Wyoming bit, but all of it, has to do with the American West.

Q4

Why might you find all of the following at Ninus’s tomb: a woodwind instrument, the fruit of Cydonia oblonga, an animal’s nose, anyone’s hindquarters, an undernourished person, and a cosy corner of a pub?

CLUES

- It would be rude to imply you needed more help with this one.

- You’re looking for the names of six people who all do something together.

A3

This is about the names of Native American tribes, subjugated and depleted by white expansion and conquest, and by foreign diseases, since the first European settlement of the Americas.

The instrumental hit is ‘Apache’, composed by Jerry Lordan, which became the first no. 1 for the Shadows (after an unsuccessful initial recording by Bert Weedon). Lordan cited as his inspiration for the melody the 1954 Western film Apache, starring Burt Lancaster.

Cheyenne is the capital city of Wyoming. Native American names for towns, rivers and other geographical features are an ever-present reminder of the history of the territories concerned.

The instantly recognizable twin-engine Boeing Chinook helicopter is one of the workhorses of the US Army and the Royal Air Force, introduced in 1962.

The Florida-based Piper aircraft company made a point of naming its models after Native American tribes in the 1950s and 60s: the Pawnee was followed by the Comanche, the Cherokee, the Apache, the Navajo and the Cheyenne.

A4

They’d be at Ninus’s tomb because that’s the setting for the play about Pyramus and Thisbe performed by the ‘rude mechanicals’ in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The mechanicals in the play are Flute (a woodwind instrument), Quince (a fruit), Snout (an animal’s nose), Bottom (hindquarters), Starveling (an undernourished person) and Snug (a cosy corner of a pub).

Q5

In which book would you be most likely to find together: a British journalist and thriller writer who debuted with Alys, Always; an Australian multiple Grand-Slam-winning tennis star, now a Christian minister; an actor who found fame as the original bunny-boiler; and Perry Mason’s loyal secretary?

CLUES

- Address yourself carefully to this question.

- Any or all of them could quite feasibly be in your town.

Q6

A royal performer set out his stall by confessing to impure thoughts, before excitedly anticipating the end of a century, then followed it up with some colourful precipitation and a rapid circumnavigation of the globe, before lamenting the state of the age, soundtracking a superhero and garlanding himself with jewels – and all this before a symbol took over. Who is this about?

CLUES

- The performer is royal in name only.

- If we told you the colour of the precipitation you’d get it straight away, because this colour is indelibly associated with him.

A5

The answer is the A to Z, or any kind of street atlas, because they are women whose full names sound like addresses.

Harriet Lane, British author born in 1969; Margaret Court (b.1942), one of the very few women to have won every one of the major Grand Slam tennis titles – in singles, doubles and mixed doubles – during her career; Glenn Close (b.1947), whose superstardom came after Fatal Attraction (1987) in which her character Alex has an affair and then a murderous feud with Dan (Michael Douglas); Della Street, the glamorous fictional secretary of attorney Perry Mason in the stories by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970).

A6

The royal performer is Prince (1958–2016).

Well done if you spotted the reference to seven album titles.

Confessing to impure thoughts (Dirty Mind), before excitedly anticipating the end of a century (1999), then some colourful precipitation (Purple Rain) and a rapid circumnavigation of the globe (Around the World in a Day), before lamenting the state of the age (Sign o’ the Times), soundtracking a superhero (Batman) and garlanding himself with jewels (Diamonds and Pearls). And all this before he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, in 1992.

Q7

Why might John Wilmot, William Pitt and John Montagu have been courted by the Conqueror?

CLUES

- These people all had aristocratic titles that are relevant.

- John Montagu is known for inventing a foodstuff without which modern life would be very different.

Q8

Which Goodie would flourish in the company of an Australian cricketing legend, a Colossal Tunny-hunter and a giant of German post-war literature?

CLUES

- By ‘Goodie’ we mean a member of the Goodies.

- The work of the Tunny-hunter was top secret but led to the development of a vital component of twenty-first-century life.

A7

They are, respectively, the real names of the Earl of Rochester, the Earl of Chatham and the Earl of Sandwich – all ‘Men of Kent’ (i.e. from the lands east of the Medway). In opposition to the ‘Kentish men’ of the western half of the county, the Men of Kent were regarded as stout-hearted native stock, and granted many privileges by the Normans.

John Wilmot (1647–80) was the 2nd Earl of Rochester, by some distance the filthiest of all major English poets, author of ‘Signior Dildo’, ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’ and other verses for all the family.

William Pitt the Elder (1708–78), aka ‘The Great Commoner’, was created 1st Earl of Chatham on his appointment as Lord Privy Seal in July 1766, although this, ironically, effectively ended his career, as he was no longer seen to live up to his nickname and thereby lost much of his popularity.

John Montagu (1718–92), the 4th Earl of Sandwich, gave his name to the dish of meat and bread he is alleged to have invented around 1762, to eat during a 24-hour stint at a gaming table. He was a member of Francis Dashwood’s dissolute ‘Hellfire Club’ or the ‘Mad Monks of Medmenham Abbey’. Captain Cook named the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) after him.

A8

This is about people with horticultural names.

Dr Graeme Garden (b.1943) was one of the Goodies, as well as having been a writer and performer at the heart of the British comedy establishment since the mid-1960s. He has been a resident panellist on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue since 1972 and he co-devised The Unbelievable Truth with Jon Naismith.

Allan Border (b.1955), Australian cricket captain, held the world record for consecutive Test appearances (153) until 2018 when it was surpassed by Alastair Cook.

Tommy Flowers, MBE (1905–98) led the hunt to crack the Nazis’ Tuna or Tunny code, several orders of magnitude more complex than Enigma. He was recommended by Alan Turing and he worked at Dollis Hill (the Post Office’s research centre) during the war years, producing a valve-driven proto-computer known as Colossus, which he demonstrated at Bletchley Park in December 1943.

The oeuvre of the prolific German novelist Günter Grass (1927–2015) includes some of the most important works of post-war German self-examination and rehabilitation. Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959) is his most famous book.

Q9

If you’d arranged to meet a Devon poet and critic, Alan Measles’s best friend and the rapper Tracy Lauren Marrow in a bar, what would you order for them?

CLUES

- The poet is one of the foremost British women poets of the late twentieth century.

- The rapper has a strong interest in heavy metal music.

Q10

Ralph Fiennes as Charles van Doren; James McAvoy as Brian Jackson; and Dev Patel as Jamal Malik. What do they have in common?

CLUES

- The fact that these people have a quiz question devoted to them seems very appropriate.

- Don’t make this one seem harder than it really is.

A9

You’d line up drinks on the bar appropriate to their names.

The English poet and critic from Devon is Patricia Beer (1919–99).

Alan Measles’s best friend is the British artist Grayson Perry (b.1960). Alan Measles is his teddy bear, with him since childhood, whom he sometimes carries with him in public and who appears occasionally in his work.

Tracy Lauren Marrow (b.1958) is the real name of the rapper known as Ice-T.

A10

They are the protagonists in three movies about quizzes.

Ralph Fiennes starred as disgraced contestant Charles van Doren who was ‘fed’ the answers in Robert Redford’s film Quiz Show (1994), about the Twenty-One quiz-fixing scandal of 1950s America.

James McAvoy is the gauche hero of Starter for 10, (dir. Tom Vaughan, 2006) based on the novel by David Nicholls, who succumbs to the ultimate temptation on University Challenge.

Dev Patel plays the young contestant Jamal Malik from the shanties of Mumbai, forced to defend his extraordinary performance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, in Danny Boyle’s glorious Slumdog Millionaire (2008), loosely adapted from the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup.