May 7, 2013

CHURCHILL QUIZ: FINEST HOUR 146, SPRING 2010

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. “When does one first begin to remember? When do the waving lights and shadows of dawning consciousness cast their print upon the mind of a child?” These are the opening sentences of which Churchill book? (L)

2. Where did Churchill give the Iron Curtain speech? (S)

3. Who cabled Churchill on 8 December 1941: “Today all of us are in he same boat with you…and it is a ship which will not and can not be sunk”? (W)

4. “Those who choose the moment for beginning wars do not always fix the moment for ending them.” (1918.) To which country did Churchill refer ? (W)

5. At a Conservative fête in 1938 WSC told the Duchess of Buccleuch: “Put Neville Chamberlain with the shun in his eyes and the wind in his teesch.” Translate. (M)

6. Whom did an 1897 Daily Chronicle reviewer describe as “Pushful, the Younger”? (M)

Level 3

7. What were the warnings which Churchill sent to Stalin between April and June 1941, which were mainly ignored? (W)

8. Young Winston wrote his mother from his Brighton school in 1885: “Tell Oom I got my coat.” Who was Oom? (P)

9. Which event prompted WSC to broadcast in June 1940: “We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause”? (W)

10. What is the date of this ditty? You’ve heard of Winston Churchill This is all I need to say He’s the latest and the greatest Correspondent of the day. (P)

11. From whom in 1910 did King George V receive a letter with this observation? “It must not however be forgotten that there are idlers and wastrels at both ends of the social scale.” (C)

12. “I must record the strong impression which this remarkable man made [in 1895] upon my untutored mind. I have never seen his like, or in some respects his equal.” Who is the young Churchill describing? (C)

Level 2

13. Churchill’s Amid These Storms was published in New York in 1932. What was the title of the British edition? (L)

14. Which of Churchill’s relations was known as the “Father of the American Turf”? (P)

15. In February 1938 WSC spoke about the new Foreign SecretarY, Lord Halifax: “What is the point of crying out for the moon, when you have the sun, and you have that bright orb of day from whose effulgent beams the lesser luminaries derive their radiance.” Who was the “bright orb”? (C)

16. Which Churchill book, published in 1910, did he describe “as a guide for some and as an armoury for others”? (L)

17. On 12 November 1943 Churchill cabled Roosevelt, saying that this would be a good time to rid ourselves of “that turbulent Knight.” Who was the Knight? (C)

18. In which speech did Churchill say: “Do we not owe it to ourselves, to our children, to mankind tormented, to make sure that these catastrophes shall not engulf us for the third time”? (S)

Level 1

19. Who wrote the excellent monograph on Churchill in the 2004 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography? (L)

20. Why was 13 August an important historical date for Winston Churchill? (P)

21. How old was Churchill when Asquith made him Home Secretary? (S)

22. After which speech in May 1940 did WSC say to his old friend Desmond Morton, “That got the sods, didn’t it”? (M)

23. At a White House luncheon in 1943, when a guest brought up India, WSC asked: “Are we talking about the brown Indians in India, who have multiplied alarmingly under the benevolent British rule? Or are we speaking of the red Indians in America who, I understand, are almost extinct?” Who was the guest? (M)

24. Where did Churchill say in 1904: “To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle”? (S)