April 25, 2013

CHURCHILL QUIZ: FINEST HOUR 150, SPRING 2011

BY JAMES LANCASTER

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

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Level 4

1. A 1919-20 limerick:
“There was a young man of Dundee / Who they granted command of the sea / So they gave him command / Of the air and the land / Just to make it quite fair for all three.” Who was the young man? (M)

2. In his book The River War, what did Churchill describe as “the most signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science over barbarians”? (W)

3. Haldane (Secretary of State for War, 1912-14) once said that an argument with him in Cabinet was like “arguing with a brass band.” To whom did Haldane refer? (C)

4. Why was Sunday 28 May 1911 a special day for Winston and Clementine Churchill? (P)

5. In which speech did Churchill say: “If we can stand up to him [Hitler], all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands”? (W)

6. In a note to cousin Ivor Guest on 19 January 1899, WSC wrote: “I have been busy with my book and live in a strange world bounded on the north by the Preface and on the south by the Appendix & whose natural features consist of Chapters & paragraphs.” To which book did he refer? (L)

Level 3

7. Which U.S. President, according to Churchill, “did not truly divine the instinct of the American people”? (W)

8. In 1943 Professor R.V. Jones saw “an individual in a boiler suit come padding into the room; I imagined him to be a Ministry of Works maintenance engineer.” Who was he? (M)

9. In which speech did WSC say, “We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering?” (S)

10. “If there is a game which could prepare a youth for a soldier’s life, that game is —— .” Fill in the blank. (P)

11. Churchill told the Indian Empire Society in 1930: “It is no use trying to satisfy a tiger by feeding him with cat’s-meat.” To whom did he refer? (M)

12. In his first public speech in 1894, WSC stood on a soapbox and said: “Ladies of the Empire! I stand for Liberty!” Which Empire? (P)

Level 2

13. Who in 1953 called Churchill “an old man in a hurry”? (S)

14. In 1911, WSC told Violet Bonham Carter, “They are so overrated. They only said everything first. I’ve said just as good things myself. But they got in before me.” Who were they? (L)

15. WSC said, “Why will people keep referring to that bloody pot-boiler?” To which of his articles did he refer? (L)

16. In which book does Churchill pro- claim the maxim, “In sport, in courage, and in the sight of heaven, all men meet on equal terms”? (L)

17. Whom did Churchill like to call “The noblest Roman of them all”? (C)

18. When did WSC say: “I am a child of the House of Commons and have been here I believe longer than anyone. I was much upset when I was violently thrown out of my collective cradle”? (M)

Level 1

19. Who wrote of Churchill after a luncheon in 1925: “[he] was in his best form: He is a Chimborazo or Everest among the sand-hills of the Baldwin Cabinet”? (C)

20. Who complimented Churchill on his speech about the Brussels Sugar Convention on 2 March 1904: “The first part of that speech was the most sustained piece of irony I have ever heard in the House of Commons.” (C)

21. Who remarked about Churchill’s flight to Moscow in August 1942: “A flight of 10,000 miles through hostile and foreign skies may be the duty of young pilots, but for a Statesman burdened with the world’s cares it is an act of inspiring gallantry and valor”? (W)

22. In which speech did WSC say, “Do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straight forward and die if need be—unconquered”? (S)

23. WSC said at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on 9 May 1938: “We express our immediate plan and policy in a single sentence: ‘Arm and stand by the Covenant.'” Who were “we”? (S)

24. What was Winston Churchill’s connection with the Londonderry Arms Hotel in Carnlough, County Antrim, Ireland? (P)