BENIGHTED KINGDOM: Britain
1. Queen Elizabeth II, whose coronation took place in 1952. Since the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, she is also the world’s longest-serving monarch.
2. Twelve, of whom Theresa May is the latest. Of them, nine have been Conservative, two Labour and one Liberal. Five went on to win a general election during their premiership.
3. Stephen (1135–1154) whose reign was marked by civil war and John (1199–1216) whose misrule led the barons to insist on the Magna Carta in 1215.
4. According the 2011 census Muslims are the second-largest religious group in England and Wales, making up 4.8% of the population, compared with 59.3% who identified as Christian. In a survey by Ipsos Mori, a pollster, Britons overestimated this by a factor of more than four.
5. In the 1910s; in 1918 Constance Markievicz became the first woman to be elected to Westminster but as an Irish republican she did not take her seat. The first woman to do so was Nancy Astor in 1919.
6. Three, in 1908, 1948 and 2012.
7. Labour politician James Callaghan between the years of 1964 and 1979. He is, however, best remembered for leading Britain through the “Winter of Discontent” in 1978–79.
8. 98%, when investment income was included in 1974 (but only 750,000 paid it). It was cut to 40% by 1988 by Margaret Thatcher’s government.
9. Japanese. The restaurant was a branch of Itsu on Piccadilly, near The Economist Tower.
10. Queen Victoria. She reigned from 1837 to 1901, longer than the average Briton’s life expectancy at the time.
11. King Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor after his abdication. Along with his wife, the Duke visited Hitler in 1937; there was a plot by the Germans to install him as a puppet king in the event of a successful German invasion of Britain.
12. It was the first advanced country to go to the IMF for a loan.
13. The Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. They have their own assemblies and are not part of the EU or the British Commonwealth.
14. George H. W. Bush of prime minister’s questions, the now-weekly session in which the head of the government must answer questions from MPs.
15. Lord Shelburne, the Duke of Wellington (both born in Ireland before it became part of the union in 1801) and Andrew Bonar Law, who was born in Canada.
16. They are both islands, the Isle of Wight and Na h-Eileanan an Iar, part of the Highlands and Islands. The latter seat used to be known as the Western Isles.
17. St Francis of Assisi with the words “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” In fact, he had been dead almost 700 years when the prayer was first printed, anonymously, by a French clerical magazine, La Clochette, in 1912. The real author was probably the magazine’s editor, Father Esther Bouquerel.
18. a) Oxford (12 out of 23 who have held the office); b) five (David Lloyd George, Ramsay McDonald, Winston Churchill, James Callaghan and John Major).
19. Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table while MacMillan addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on the subject of the UN’s intervention in the former Belgian Congo.
20. Africa. He gave the speech to the Parliament of South Africa in Cape Town in 1960.
21. In 1969 it was lowered to 18 for both men and women. Most men over the age of 21 had been able to vote since 1884 and women over the age of 21 since 1928.
22. They are mountains over 3000 feet in height, named after Sir Hugh Munro who first surveyed and catalogued them in the late nineteenth century. Over 6,000 people claim to have climbed (or walked up) the lot.
23. Historically it was the chief whip but today it houses the prime minister’s press office and strategic communications unit. The upper floor forms part of the prime minister’s apartment and the chief whip’s office has been moved to 9 Downing Street.
24. Chancellor of the exchequer. Jacqui Smith, a Labour politician, was the first female home secretary in 2007; Margaret Beckett, also of the Labour Party, became the first female foreign secretary in 2006; and Margaret Thatcher was the first female prime minister in 1979.
25. Welsh with 562,000 speakers, only narrowly ahead of Polish, which at 546,000, is the most-spoken non-native language.
26. Harold MacMillan. A nephew of his wife, Lady Dorothy Cavendish, married Kathleen, a sister to Kennedy. She died before Kennedy became president.
27. He was an osteopath who treated a number of society figures including Lord Astor and Winston Churchill’s son-in-law. A musical called Stephen Ward appeared in the West End in 2013; it was a rare flop for Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer.
28. Twenty-two. Despite the book’s title, not all of these were invasions as, in some cases, a British military presence occurred with the agreement of the local power and in others, action was purely naval.
29. Spencer Perceval on May 11, 1812. He was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham, a merchant with an obsessive grievance against the government, who believed he had been unfairly imprisoned by the Russians and was owed compensation.
30. Only 5.9%. Farmland covers more than half the country. If one looks at buildings alone, they cover just 1.4% of the land area, less than is revealed when the tide goes out.
31. a) Andrew Bonar Law b) Anthony Eden c) Neville Chamberlain d) Benjamin Disraeli e) John Major.
32. Undersecretary of state for the colonies in 1905. As such he was responsible for colonial affairs worldwide.
33. Robber or brigand. It is derived from the middle Irish word tóraidhe.
34. Chequers in Buckinghamshire, which was given to the nation via a Parliamentary Act of 1917. Up until then, prime minsters had tended to be drawn from the landed gentry, so had their own country estates.
35. Medicine in 1865. She was also a suffragist, the co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women, the first female dean of a British medical school and the first female doctor of medicine in France.
36. The cod wars. Iceland won.
37. They were the most popular baby names for boys and girls in 2016.
38. Curry house. He opened the Hindoostane Coffee House in Portman Square in London in 1810. Today the curry house is a British institution. Most are run by Bangladeshis; around two-fifths of working-age Bangladeshi men in Britain toil in restaurants. But changes in eating habits, stricter immigration rules and a better-educated British-Bangladeshi population mean the future of curry houses is uncertain.
39. In 1975 on the country’s membership of the European Community. The vote was 67%–33% in favour of staying in.
40. Stonehenge. She didn’t like it, so in 1918 he gave it to the nation.
41. a) Dessert. It is pastry filled with dried fruit and spices, often eaten with cream b) Starter. It is a Scottish soup made from haddock, potatoes and onions and c) Main course. It is sausages cooked in batter.
43. Denis Thatcher. Thatcher never lived with his first wife, and they divorced after his demobilisation and return to England after the second world war in 1948.
44. New Orleans with 62.7 inches. Even Orlando gets more rain than London, which averages only 23 inches. Admittedly, London gets a lot more cloudy days than the other two.
45. The Big Bang, Margaret Thatcher’s sudden deregulation of the financial markets that largely created today’s City (the common name for London’s financial sector).
46. Virginia Wade in 1977. There were two female winners in the 1960s as well. The previous male winner was Fred Perry in 1936, but that wasn’t the question.
47. Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher of nihilism, known for his theory of the Übermensch.
48. a) Tony Blair, Labour, won a majority of 179 in 1997; b) Tony Blair, Labour, won a majority of 167 in 2001; and c) Clement Atlee, also Labour, won a majority of 146 in 1945.
49. The unicorn. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Scottish unicorns can be found living close to the Loch Ness monster.
50. The establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, although it qualified this by saying that this should not prejudice non-Jewish communities.