A Christmas book quiz

I love doing them, so I thought I'd write one

The Christmas Quiz is a very important part of my family’s annual traditions. It takes place after the meal when everyone is a bit squiffy and there’s always a LOT of shouting and disputing, which is all part of the fun.

The one we do, from the Telegraph newspaper, is about the news in the year gone by, but I thought I would write one based on the subject of books.

It says in each category how many points you can score in that round. I think there’s a total of 95 to score (five rounds of a possible 15 points, two of possible 10), but I’m not very reliable on sums.

I would love to know if any of you do it – and if you do it collectively, how much shouting is involved and who won.

When compiling this quiz I called upon some of my best reading and writing gal pals to make suggestions for the answers in each category.

Warmest thanks to: Jessica Adams, Jane Eastell, Josa Keyes, Victoria Killay, Kathy Lette, Catherine Mayer, Hilary Robertson. Julia Stafford-Northcote, Sue Tilley and Mary Watts.

And here’s wishing you all the merriest Christmas. You are all marvellous.

Most swoon-making leading chaps

One point each for character, book and author

1. Napoleon himself rescues this wounded prince from the battlefield after the Battle of Austerlitz.

2. He didn’t really swim in a lake in the book, but we love him anyway, the silly snobby dear.

3. Two very different sisters love him and we are gutted when he marries ‘the wrong one’ but it all works out for the best.

4. He did it all for the love of Daisy…

5. They seek him here, they seek him there.

Most swoon-making cads

One point each for character, book and author

1. He is rumoured to be based on the equally double-barrelled first husband of the Duchess of Cornwall.

2. Hugh Grant rendered him to heavenly perfection in the film version.

3. This Regency buck fathered an equally devilish cub.

4. Kate Bush voiced our collective teenage thrill about this rough ‘un.

5. He started out as a school bully in a book by another author and inspired a whole series of his own.

Heroines you would most like to go Eurorailing with

One point each for character, book and author

1. When her parents died she moved to the village of Howling to stay with her relatives, the Starkadders.

2. This green-eyed girl cheated, stole and lied her way into high society, but we love her anyway.

3. This girl is a total gas to hang out with, but you’d want to wait until after that rehab yoke.

4. This American geisha knew how to throw a party in her brownstone apartment.

5. She showed her dull nephew how to live, how to love – and how to travel.

Best houses

One point each for book and author

1. A beautiful house in East Sussex is the centre of a five-book, 20^th century family chronicle.

2. This grand fictional estate, pivotal to the plot of an 18^th century novel, was revisited by another author in 2011 with murder afoot.

3. The title of this classic Edwardian novel is the name of the house where it is mostly set.

4. They used Castle Howard for the acclaimed 1980s TV adaptation, but it was really based on a house in Worcestershire.

5. This book opens with the heroine sitting in the kitchen sink in this memorable rented home.

Feistiest gals from children’s books

One point each for character, book and author

1. ‘And charge it please!’

2. It was her favourite and her best.

3. She glued her horrid father’s horrid hat to his horrid head.

4. Her sisters loved to dance, but she only wanted to fly a plane.

5. She had a terrible temper, but went on to become head girl of the famous clifftop boarding school.

Books so sad they should be banned by an act of parliament

One point for the book and one for the author

1. Every time you think it can’t get worse for this lovely horse – it does.

2. A particularly heart-breaking story from an author well-known for it. (As it could be any of his books, another hint – it includes the word ‘crowd’.)

3. Harrowing account of the author’s own impoverished childhood in Brooklyn and Limerick.

4. A misunderstanding on a Greek island denies a young woman and an Italian man a life of happiness.

5. Adapted from a true story about a wee doggie which is devastated by the death of his owner.

Character you would least like to go on a narrow boat holiday with

One point each for character, book and author

1. Excruciatingly pious young woman who marries a ghastly clergyman in the opening sallies of a very long book.

2. Ghastly dullard who dogs the narrator from school days in his dreary rise to the top.

3. Unloving and spiteful aunt, mother of the appalling Dudley, does not appreciate her nephew’s unusual talents.

4. The grimmest of housekeepers.

5. She’ll thcream and thcream until…

ANSWERS

Most swoon-making leading chaps

1. Prince Andrei from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

2. Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

3. Laurie from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

4. Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

5. Sir Percy Blakeney from The Scarlett Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

Most swoon-making cads

1. Rupert Campbell-Black from The Rutshire Chronicles (any of the books in it gets a point) by Jilly Cooper

2. Daniel Cleaver from Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

3. The Duke of Avon, from Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer

4. Heathcliff, from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

5. Sir Harry Paget Flashman from The Flashman Papers series by George MacDonald Fraser

Heroine you would most like to go Eurorailing with

1. Flora Post from Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

2. Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

3. Rachel Walsh from Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes

4. Holly Golightly from Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

5. Aunt Augusta from Travels With My Aunt by Graham Green

Best houses

1. Home Place in the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane-Howard

2. Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

3. Howard’s End in Howard’s End by EM Forster

4. Brideshead in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

5. The castle in I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Feistiest gals from children’s books

1. Eloise from Eloise by Kay Thompson

2. Lola from Charlie & Lola (many books) by Lauren Child

3. Matilda from Matilda by Roald Dahl

4. Petrova Fossil from Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield

5. Darrell Rivers from Mallory Towers

Books so sad they should be banned by an act of parliament

1. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

2. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

3. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

4. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

5. Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson

Characters you would least like to go on a narrow boat holiday with

1. Dorothea Brooke from Middlemarch by George Eliot

2. Kenneth Widmerpool from A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

3. Petunia Dursley from the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

4. Mrs Danvers in Rebecca by Daphne du Mauruer

5. Violet Elizabeth Bott from the Just William books by Richmal Crompton

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My goal for 2025 is to raise enough regular funds from this to be able to divide my time and creative energies solely between Style Notes and writing books.

Then I could give up writing for newspapers and magazines, which is so distracting and gets in the way of the book stuff.

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A little reminder of one of my favourite cads in literature…