Authors who were spies
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Authors Who Were Spies — Daily trivia Friday, October 23, 2026: questions and answers
All 10 questions with answers and explanations. Play this daily
Q 01Which children's author spied for Britain in wartime Washington?
- AA.A. Milne
- BC.S. Lewis
- CEnid Blyton
- DRoald Dahl
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Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl, a wartime RAF fighter pilot, became assistant air attaché in Washington and fed intelligence to British Security Coordination, two decades before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Q 02By what pen name is ex-MI6 officer David Cornwell best known?
- ATom Clancy
- BRobert Ludlum
- CJohn le Carré
- DKen Follett
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John le Carré
David Cornwell wrote as John le Carré because Foreign Office officials could not publish under their own names while he was a spy; he later said he could not recall where the name came from.
Q 03Novelist Peter Matthiessen co-founded The Paris Review as cover for his work with which US spy agency?
- AThe CIA
- BThe FBI
- CThe NSA
- DArmy Intelligence
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The CIA
The CIA recruited Matthiessen at Yale; he later said he invented The Paris Review as his cover, and called the spy work the only adventure he ever regretted.
Q 04Which novel by ex-MI6 officer Graham Greene follows a vacuum-cleaner salesman who invents spies?
- AOur Man in Havana
- BThe Quiet American
- CBrighton Rock
- DThe End of the Affair
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Our Man in Havana
Our Man in Havana mocks MI6 for swallowing its informants' inventions, a service Greene knew firsthand from his wartime posting in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Q 05The Day of the Jackal author Frederick Forsyth said MI6 never paid him for his missions; what did he get instead?
- AA knighthood
- BHelp with his novels
- CA diplomatic passport
- DA rent-free London flat
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Help with his novels
Help with his novels: Forsyth said MI6 officers aided his research in return, and one errand had him collect a package from a Russian colonel in a Dresden museum toilet.
Q 06Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe spied for the English government in which country as it debated union?
- AIreland
- BScotland
- CWales
- DFrance
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Scotland
Scotland: in 1706 Robert Harley sent Defoe to Edinburgh as a secret agent to win Scots over to union, and Defoe kept Harley posted on public opinion there.
Q 07Before creating James Bond, Ian Fleming was an intelligence officer in which service?
- AMI5
- BThe RAF
- CThe British Army
- DThe Royal Navy
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The Royal Navy
The Royal Navy: Fleming served as personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, and he later made James Bond a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
Q 08During World War II, which enemy vessels did Ernest Hemingway, who also ran a spy ring, hunt from his fishing boat?
- AJapanese submarines
- BItalian battleships
- CVichy French warships
- DGerman U-boats
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German U-boats
German U-boats were sinking tankers around the Caribbean, so Hemingway armed his fishing boat Pilar with a submachine gun and went on patrol off Cuba.
Q 09When Cambridge hesitated over Christopher Marlowe's degree, which body vouched for his 'good service' to the Queen?
- AParliament
- BThe Royal Society
- CThe Privy Council
- DThe Church of England
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The Privy Council
The Privy Council told Cambridge in 1587 that Marlowe had no plan to join the Catholic seminary at Reims and had done the Queen 'good service', widely read as secret work.
Q 10While posing as a naturalist, Scouting for Boys author Robert Baden-Powell hid plans of forts inside drawings of what?
- AWildflowers
- BSeashells
- CButterflies
- DBirds' eggs
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Butterflies
Butterflies: Baden-Powell worked the outlines of military installations into his sketches of butterfly wings, and told the story in My Adventures as a Spy.
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