April 5, 2013

CHURCHILL QUIZ: FINEST HOUR 154, SPRING 2012

BY JAMES LANCASTER

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Each quiz includes four questions in six categories: Churchill contemporaries (C), literary matters (L), miscellaneous (M), personal details (P), statesmanship (S) and war (W), the easier questions first. Can you reach Level 1?

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LEVEL 4

1. Clementine: “[Chartwell is] closed and there will be no-one to cook for you.” WSC: “I shall cook for myself. I can boil an —. I’ve seen it done.” Fill in the blank. (P)

2. Of whom did Churchill write: “For years I had read every word he spoke and what the newspapers said about him”? (P)

3. Les Grands Contemporains is the French title of which Churchill book? (L)

4. “My greatest address was to an audience of one during a rainstorm in a gazebo at Blenheim.” Who was the audience? (P)

5. What did WSC refer to when he wrote: “The greatest armada that ever left our shores set out for the coast of France”? (W)

6. “After the end of the World War of 1914 there was a deep conviction and almost universal hope that peace would reign in the world.” This is the first sentence in which of WSC’s books? (L)

LEVEL 3

7. Who wrote to Churchill on 11 September 1939, “I am glad you did the Marlboro [sic] volumes before this thing started…”? (L)

8. WSC wrote: “The assassin’s bullet had wrought more evil to the United States than all the Confederate cannonade.” How did it? (W)

9. Whom did journalist A.G. Gardiner describe in 1913: “He is always unconsciously playing a part—an heroic part. And he is himself the most astonished spectator. He sees himself moving through the smoke of battle—triumphant, terrible, his brow clothed with thunder, his legions looking to him for victory, and not looking in vain.”? (M)

10. Over champagne on 10 May 1940, R.A. Butler told John Colville that “the good clean tradition of English politics…has been sold to the greatest adventurer of modern political history.” To whom was Butler referring? (C)

11. Churchill said on 12 October 1942 : “He sees with chagrin and amazement that our defeats are but stepping-stones to victory, and that his victories are only the stepping-stones to ruin.” Who is “he”? (W)

12. Which American broadcaster wrote of WSC’s election victory in 1951: “The people voted their apprehensions of the future and their memories of the past.” (S)

LEVEL 2

13. One of the “Morals of the Work” in Churchill’s The Second World War was “In Peace: —.” Provide the missing word. (S)

14. What inspired WSC to broadcast in 1952: “I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian Era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the Anthem, ‘God Save the Queen!'”? (C)

15. Which U.S. President said this of WSC?: “History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future.” (S)

16. A. G. Gardiner described The River War as “one of the best military books in the language.” How old was the author when the book was published? (L)

17. WSC to his wife, 18 April 1912: “The — disaster is the prevailing theme here [the Admiralty]….The strict observance of the great tradition of the sea towards women and children reflects nothing but honour upon our civilization.” Which disaster? (M)

18. Who wrote this of Churchill?: “I myself never much minded having my head bitten off, because I knew that instead of throwing it into the waste-paper-basket, he would very soon be fitting it back on my neck with care and even with ceremony.” (C)

LEVEL 1

19. Name at least one of the seven American States which granted Churchill honorary citizenship shortly before he was granted honorary U.S. citizenship in 1963. (M)

20. Which failed campaigns did WSC mean when he wrote of May 1940: “It was a marvel that I survived and maintained my position in public esteem and Parliamentary confidence”? (W)

21. Of whom did Churchill write in January 1941: “He was a crumbling lighthouse from which there shone the beams that led great fleets to harbour”? (C)

22. In his speech at Mansion House on 19 Feb- ruary 1919, WSC famously referred to the sup- port being given to those Russian armies which were “fighting the foul — of Bolshevism.” Supply the missing alliterative word. (M)

23. In Egypt in February 1945, to whom did WSC say this? “…that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking of cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.” (P)

24. To whom did WSC write this? “Unteachable from infancy to tomb—there is the first & main characteristic of mankind.” (S)