110 Fun Facts About Great Expectations

What is the full name of the orphan nicknamed Pip?

Philip Pirrip was too much for his infant tongue, which 'could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip', so Pip he called himself and Pip he stayed.

In which weekly periodical, owned by Dickens himself, was Great Expectations first serialised from December 1860?

All the Year Round was the weekly Dickens launched in 1859 after falling out with the publishers of Household Words, which he then won in court, closed and folded into the new magazine.

Where does Great Expectations famously open?

In a graveyard on the Kent marshes, Pip is studying his parents' tombstone when an escaped convict starts up from among the graves and turns him upside down, shaking out nothing but a piece of bread.

What two things does the convict demand that Pip bring him?

Food and a file: Pip steals a pork pie, brandy and a file for him, and when soldiers recapture the convict he claims the theft as his own to keep the boy out of trouble.

What is the cane Pip's fierce older sister beats him with called?

Tickler was 'a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame', says Pip, whose sister likes to boast that she brought him up 'by hand'.

What is the name of the decaying mansion where Miss Havisham lives?

Satis House means 'Enough House': Pip is told the name promised that whoever owned it could want nothing else, a bitter joke given what he finds rotting inside.

What has Miss Havisham worn every day for decades?

Her wedding dress has yellowed on her ever since she was jilted, and she still wears a single shoe, because the other was lying on her dressing table when the news reached her.

At what time have all the clocks in Miss Havisham's house been stopped?

Twenty minutes to nine is the exact minute her fiancé's letter arrived to jilt her, so she stopped every clock in the house, and her own watch, at that moment.

What was the trade of Miss Havisham's father, the source of her fortune?

Brewer was a gentlemanly trade, Pip is told: 'while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew'. The silent brewery still stands beside her house.

Which pompous corn merchant first takes Pip to play at Miss Havisham's house?

Mr Pumblechook spends the rest of the book telling the town he was the founder of Pip's fortunes, then turns it against Pip when the money is gone.

What is the name of Miss Havisham's beautiful, cold adopted daughter?

Estella warns Pip herself, 'I have no heart', and she means it: Miss Havisham raised her to break men's hearts in revenge for her own.

What does Herbert Pocket tactfully teach Pip on his first night in London?

Table manners, slipped in between gossip: 'in London it is not the custom to put the knife in the mouth, for fear of accidents', he says, so cheerfully that both of them end up laughing.

Who is the surly journeyman at the forge who attacks Pip's sister and later tries to murder Pip?

Dolge Orlick lures Pip to a lonely sluice-house, ties him up and boasts of striking down his sister, until rescuers burst in, guided by Trabb's boy, the tailor's lad who once mocked Pip in the street.

What weapon is used to strike down Pip's sister in Great Expectations?

A leg iron is found beside her, and Pip is sure it is the one his convict shed years before, so he carries the guilt of having armed her attacker.

What is the profession of Mr Jaggers, who brings Pip news of his expectations?

Lawyer, and a feared one: he scrubs his hands with scented soap after every case, and Pip decides he is washing his clients off 'as if he were a surgeon or a dentist'.

Where in London do Pip and Herbert Pocket first share rooms?

Barnard's Inn let Pip down at once: he had pictured a grand hotel and found 'the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together', and the friends later moved to the Temple.

Which brutish fellow pupil of Pip's eventually marries Miss Havisham's adopted daughter?

Bentley Drummle, whom Jaggers admiringly calls 'the Spider', treats his wife cruelly and then dies in an accident brought on by his ill-treatment of a horse.

What kind of home does Wemmick share with his 'Aged Parent'?

A miniature castle with a drawbridge and moat lets the clerk leave the office behind: he hoists a flag on Sundays and lets off a small cannon, the Stinger, every night to delight his deaf father.

Where does half of Pip's birthday £500 secretly go?

Herbert's partnership with a young shipping broker is arranged in secret after Pip turns twenty-one: Herbert comes home radiant at his luck, and Pip cries with joy that his expectations 'had done some good to somebody'.

How did the convict Magwitch earn the fortune he secretly spent on making Pip a gentleman?

Sheep farming made him rich after he was transported, and every guinea went to Pip: 'I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work', he tells the horrified young man.

To which colony was the convict Magwitch transported for life in Great Expectations?

New South Wales was meant to be the last England saw of him: 'I was sent for life. It's death to come back', he tells Pip, yet he risks the gallows simply to look at the gentleman he has made.

Under what false name does Magwitch hide after secretly returning to England in Great Expectations?

Provis is the name he took on the ship home, and Pip passes him off as a visiting uncle while privately shrinking from the rough man whose money has made him a gentleman.

Which man jilted Miss Havisham and later fought Magwitch as a fellow escaped convict?

Compeyson, a smooth gentleman swindler, drew seven years to Magwitch's fourteen by looking the part in court, and that injustice is why Magwitch gives up his own escape to hand him back to the soldiers.

Who turns out to be the mother of Miss Havisham's adopted daughter?

Molly, Jaggers's housekeeper: Pip sees it over dinner at his guardian's, in hands and eyes he has loved since boyhood, and later learns that the father is his own convict, Magwitch.

How is Miss Havisham fatally injured?

Her dress catches fire as Pip looks in on her one last time: she runs at him ablaze, and he smothers the flames with his coats and the great cloth from her table, dragging down its rotten feast and burning his own hands.

Where is Pip's rowing boat taking the convict when the police intercept it?

To a steamboat bound for Hamburg, which they plan to hail in midstream: in the struggle the convict goes overboard, comes up badly injured and dies of his wounds before he can be hanged.

What happens to Magwitch's fortune once he is convicted in Great Expectations?

It is forfeited to the Crown, as a convicted felon's property, so Pip is left penniless and in debt, and he takes care that the dying man never learns his gift has come to nothing.

Who nurses Pip through his illness in London and pays off his debts?

Joe comes up to London, nurses him for weeks and then slips away early one morning, leaving a short note and a receipt showing he has paid the debt Pip had been arrested for.

In which city does Pip work for eleven years with Herbert before returning to England?

Cairo is where the firm opens its eastern branch, and Pip follows Herbert out as a mere clerk, lodges with him and his wife, lives frugally and pays off every debt.

Where does Pip meet the widowed heroine in the final scene of Great Expectations?

In a ruined garden, all that is left of the house where they met as children: she is a widow softened by suffering, and as the evening mist rises Pip sees 'no shadow of another parting from her'.

Which fellow novelist persuaded Dickens to rewrite the ending of Great Expectations as too sad?

Edward Bulwer-Lytton read the proofs and argued so well for a happier close that Dickens gave way, telling a friend he had 'put in as pretty a little piece of writing as I could'.

Which writer dismissed Great Expectations as 'that Pip nonsense' yet greeted each instalment with 'roars of laughter'?

Thomas Carlyle could grumble as he liked: Dickens revered him, and had built his previous novel, A Tale of Two Cities, on what he called 'Mr Carlyle's wonderful book' about the French Revolution.

Why do soldiers arrive at Pip's home in the middle of Christmas dinner?

To have handcuffs mended: Pip, sick with guilt over the raided pantry, runs straight into a sergeant holding out a pair, but the soldiers only want a blacksmith to fix a faulty lock before they hunt the convicts.

Which earlier Dickens novel, like Great Expectations, is narrated entirely in the first person by its hero?

David Copperfield was so close a cousin that Dickens reread it before starting, to avoid repeating himself, and confessed he was 'affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe'.

Which real building in Rochester is said to be Dickens's model for Miss Havisham's decaying home?

Restoration House takes its name from Charles II, who stayed there in 1660 on his way back from exile to reclaim the throne, two centuries before Dickens shut a jilted bride inside it.

In which country did Eliza Donnithorne, a recluse long rumoured to be Miss Havisham's model, live?

Australia: the story goes that her groom never came to the feast laid in her Sydney home and that she never went out again, though the evidence is thin and the link to Dickens is circumstantial.

What nickname does Herbert give Pip in Great Expectations, borrowed from the composer of The Harmonious Blacksmith?

Handel it is: Herbert dislikes his friend's real name, and since the two get on so harmoniously and Pip has just confessed to being a blacksmith's boy, the composer's title fits too well to resist.

Which village church clerk moves to London to become an actor under the stage name Mr Waldengarver?

Mr Wopsle plays Hamlet so badly that when he asks whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer, some of the audience roar yes, some no, and the rest shout 'Toss up for it'.

Which London prison does Wemmick show Pip round, moving among the inmates like a gardener among his plants?

Newgate Prison leaves Pip feeling contaminated: waiting for the coach afterwards he beats the prison dust off his feet and shakes it from his clothes, ashamed to carry jail air to the girl he has come to meet.

Which publisher issued Great Expectations as a three-volume book in 1861?

Chapman & Hall won Dickens back after he quarrelled with Bradbury & Evans, who had refused to print his personal statement about his broken marriage in Punch, and they stayed his publishers until he died.

Which American magazine began serialising Great Expectations in November 1860, days before British readers saw it?

Harper's Weekly gave its readers forty illustrations, so Americans saw Pip drawn while British readers, whose serial ran with no pictures at all, had to imagine him.

Who directed the celebrated 1946 film version of Great Expectations?

David Lean went straight from it to a second Dickens adaptation, Oliver Twist, released in 1948 with several of the same actors in new roles.

Who played the adult Pip in the 1946 film of Great Expectations?

John Mills led a cast in which the teenage Jean Simmons played the young heroine; four decades later she came back to the story as Miss Havisham in a 1989 television version.

Which two Oscars did the 1946 film of Great Expectations win?

Art direction and cinematography: the camera prize went to Guy Green, who took over after the director sacked Robert Krasker, though the film's opening scenes are still credited to Krasker.

Who played Finn, the renamed Pip, in the 1998 modern-dress film of Great Expectations?

Ethan Hawke's Finn is a painter from the Florida coast, and a mysterious benefactor bankrolls his New York gallery show in place of Pip's gentleman's education.

Who played Miss Havisham in Mike Newell's 2012 film of Great Expectations?

Helena Bonham Carter took the offer as 'a slap in the face' until Mike Newell pointed out that the book's Miss Havisham, so often filmed as an old woman, is far younger than that.

Which animated series devoted a whole episode in 2000 to retelling Great Expectations?

South Park handed the episode to its English schoolboy Pip, with Malcolm McDowell narrating as 'a British person' and Miss Havisham setting robot monkeys on the hero at the end.

Which 1997 Peter Carey novel retells Great Expectations from the returning convict's side?

Jack Maggs slips back into 1830s London under pain of death to find the young gentleman he calls his son, and is taken up by a rising young writer who sees him as a mine of material.

How did Dickens first describe Great Expectations to John Forster?

'A very fine, new and grotesque idea' opened on him while writing a little piece, and he began 'to doubt whether I had not better cancel the little paper, and reserve the notion for a new book'.

Which Kent house, a boyhood dream, did Dickens buy in 1856, four years before writing Great Expectations?

Gad's Hill Place was pointed out to him as a small boy by his father, who said he might own it one day if he worked hard; he bought it in 1856 and lived there for the rest of his life.

In Great Expectations, what does the clerk Wemmick say a man should always 'get hold of'?

Portable property is his 'guiding-star': the mourning rings he wears were all gifts from clients on their way to the gallows, and he never turns one down, since 'they're property and portable'.

What does the convict warn Pip a hidden young man will tear out if the boy fails him?

His heart and liver, to be 'tore out, roasted, and ate': the young man is pure invention, a bogey beside whom the convict claims 'I am a Angel', and the terrified boy swallows every word.

Which was the only novel Dickens completed after Great Expectations?

Our Mutual Friend was nearly lost on the way: when his train crashed at Staplehurst in 1865, Dickens helped the injured and then climbed back into his carriage to rescue the instalment he was writing.

Why did Dickens rush Great Expectations into his own magazine in December 1860?

Its sales were falling: the serial then running in his magazine had 'no vitality in it', so he called 'a council of war' and decided 'the one thing to be done was, for me to strike in'.

Which foul medicine does Pip's sister dose him with as a cure-all in Great Expectations?

Tar-water comes back to haunt him: Pip tops up the brandy bottle from the medicine jug by mistake, and at Christmas dinner a guest takes a gulp, rushes out at the door and staggers back gasping 'Tar!'.

Which catchphrase does kindly Joe Gargery keep repeating to Pip throughout Great Expectations?

What larks! is Joe's promise of fun to come; unable to write, he insists it go in as a postscript to the letter announcing his visit to Pip in London.

Which card game does Miss Havisham make Pip play with her adopted daughter on his first visit?

Beggar my neighbour is the only game Pip knows; his opponent sneers that he calls the knaves jacks, and his shame at being common starts that afternoon.

Which character teaches at the evening school in Pip's village and later marries Joe Gargery?

Biddy, an orphan like Pip, moves into his home to nurse his injured sister; after marrying Joe she has a son they name Pip.

Miss Havisham's fiancé defrauded her in league with which relative of hers?

Her half-brother Arthur shared the swindle's profits, and he dies raving that she is at his bedside with a shroud to put on him.

What does Miss Skiffins change about her gloves when she marries Wemmick?

Green ones for white: Wemmick springs the wedding on Pip during a morning walk, announcing 'Here's Miss Skiffins! Let's have a wedding.'

What is odd about Miss Havisham's feet when the young Pip is first shown into her candlelit room?

She wears one shoe because she froze her life halfway through getting ready, at the moment the bad news came. The other shoe still sits on the dressing table beside her.

How did Miss Havisham learn, on the morning she was to be married, that her groom was not coming?

By letter is how the blow fell: the note reached her at home while she was still getting ready. After a bad illness she laid the whole place waste and has never since looked upon the light of day.

Which Christmas dinner treat does Mrs Joe go to fetch for her guests, not knowing Pip has stolen it?

A pork pie had gone out to the marshes at dawn and into a hungry convict. Pip bolts for the door in terror and runs head-first into a party of soldiers.

What does Wemmick fire from his Walworth garden at nine o'clock every night, delighting his deaf father?

A small cannon he calls the Stinger goes off with a bang that makes every glass and teacup ring. The old man, nearly blown out of his armchair, cries out in triumph that he heard it.

What does Mr Jaggers do after each client or court case, in a closet that smells like a perfumer's shop?

Washes his hands, with scented soap, as if scrubbing the clients off like a surgeon. After one especially dark case Pip finds him rinsing his face and gargling his throat as well.

Which animal does young Pip think of as the starving convict snaps up the stolen food on the marshes?

A dog, and a particular one: Pip had often watched a large dog of the family's eat in the same strong, sharp, sudden bites. The man keeps glancing sideways too, as if someone might snatch his meal.

Why, by Magwitch's account, did his partner in crime get half his sentence at their joint trial?

He looked a gentleman, with curly hair, black clothes and a white pocket-handkerchief, so the court took him for the lesser villain. He got seven years; Magwitch, the 'common wretch', got fourteen.

What news does Pip whisper to the dying Magwitch in the prison infirmary?

His daughter is alive, a lady and very beautiful, Pip tells him, and adds that he loves her. Magwitch lifts Pip's hand to his lips and dies before the court's sentence can be carried out.

Which actor, who adapted Great Expectations for the stage in 1939, played Herbert Pocket in the 1946 film?

Alec Guinness had played the same part in his own stage version, which the film's director saw before making the picture. Martita Hunt, his Miss Havisham on stage, came with him to the screen.

Which Shakespeare tragedy do Pip and Herbert Pocket watch a former parish clerk mangle on a London stage?

Hamlet it is, and the crowd heckles throughout. When the prince asks whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer, some roar yes, some no, and some call for a coin toss.

What does Miss Havisham's ward offer Pip after he wins his fistfight with the pale young gentleman?

A kiss on the cheek, offered with a bright flush on her face as if something had delighted her. Pip feels it was handed to a coarse common boy like a piece of money, and was worth nothing.

At which village public house does Joe Gargery like to smoke his pipe of an evening?

The Three Jolly Bargemen has alarmingly long chalk scores on the wall by its door, a tally of drinks that never seems to be paid off. Pip's sister sends him there to bring Joe home.

Left speechless by the attack, what does Mrs Joe keep drawing on her slate that Pip takes for a T?

A hammer was her sign for the forge's journeyman, whose name she had lost. When he is fetched she is oddly eager to please him, like a child before a hard master.

Which grim ornaments sit on a shelf in Mr Jaggers's office, souvenirs of two clients who were hanged?

Casts of their faces explain the swollen features: Wemmick says one was made directly after its owner was taken down. He dusts the pair fondly and calls one of them Old Artful.

What does Wemmick carry over his shoulder on the walk that ends, as if by chance, at his own wedding?

A fishing rod, left in the church porch, is part of the act: he pretends to stumble on the church, then on the bride, then on a ring in his pocket. Pip, expecting a stroll, ends up as best man.

What nickname does Pip give the liveried servant boy he hires in London and soon finds a costly nuisance?

The Avenger, dressed up by Pip in a blue coat, canary waistcoat and top boots, needs a little to do and a great deal to eat. Pip says both requirements haunt his existence.

What relation does Pip pretend the returned convict is, to explain the stranger to his London servants?

His uncle, come unexpectedly from the country, is the story Pip settles on while still groping for a light in the dark. An old enemy later baits a trap with a note about that very 'uncle'.

What becomes of Magwitch's lifelong enemy when the escape down the Thames is intercepted?

He drowns: the pair went down locked in each other's arms and only Magwitch came up. The body turns up miles away, so disfigured that it is known only by the contents of its pockets.

What name does Mrs Joe give the prison ships moored off the marshes when guns warn of an escape?

The Hulks, she snaps, are for people who murder, rob and forge, and who always begin by asking questions. Young Pip, with a theft planned for the morning, goes up to bed in the dark terrified.

Which two-word phrase does Mrs Joe use to boast of how she raised her orphaned little brother Pip?

By hand is a phrase young Pip has to puzzle out for himself. Knowing her hard and heavy hand, and how often she lays it on her husband, he supposes Joe Gargery was raised the same way.

For what purpose has Miss Havisham raised her beautiful ward from childhood?

To break men's hearts without mercy is the lesson she murmurs in the girl's ear while Pip looks on. Years later the pupil turns it on her teacher, saying she cannot give back a love she was never given.

What crime does the recaptured convict falsely confess in front of Joe Gargery, to shield young Pip?

Raiding the forge pantry himself is his story, told so that nobody else falls under suspicion. Joe replies that he was welcome to it: they would not have him starved to death, whatever he had done.

Which two sides of his life does Wemmick insist must never be confounded, giving different advice in each?

Work and home get separate opinions: asked in the office about helping a friend with money, he says to pitch it off a bridge instead. At Walworth, in his private and personal capacity, the same question gets a far kinder hearing.

Besides never asking who his benefactor is, which condition must Pip accept to receive his fortune?

Keeping the name Pip is the first condition read out, and he is told that this is the time to object. His heart is beating so fast that he can scarcely stammer that he has no objection.

Which two-word endearment does the returned convict use for Pip over and over, even with his last words?

Dear boy closes his very last sentence, when Pip asks if he is in pain and he answers that he doesn't complain. Joe Gargery's pet name for Pip is a different one, 'old chap'.

Which earlier Dickens novel opened the first issue of the weekly that later serialised Great Expectations?

A Tale of Two Cities ran there in weekly parts from April 1859, and the launch was an immediate success. Dickens promised a friend that his next serial would not lack humour as that one had.

Which term, borrowed from German, do critics give Great Expectations as the story of Pip's growth?

Bildungsroman is the label Jerome Buckley used in his 1974 study of the form, which gave Dickens a chapter. It set Pip beside one other Dickens hero who tells his own life story.

Who played Miss Havisham in the 2023 BBC and FX series of Great Expectations written by Steven Knight?

Olivia Colman took the part in a six-part version whose cast was announced in February 2022. It was the writer's second Dickens adaptation for the BBC, after A Christmas Carol in 2019.

On which yearly occasion do Miss Havisham's fawning relatives visit, though nobody dares mention it?

Her birthday is also the day the cake now rotting under cobwebs was brought to the long table, before Pip was born. She says she will be laid on that table when she is dead, for them to come and look at.

What does Mrs Joe discover the crumpled paper to be, wrapped round a shilling a stranger gave Pip?

Two one-pound notes send Joe running back to the inn to return them, but the man has gone. They are sealed up in an ornamental teapot in the parlour, where they stay, a nightmare to Pip.

Which public institution does Pip keep comparing Wemmick's mouth to, as the clerk feeds biscuits into it?

A post office is the running joke: he throws bits of biscuit into the slit as if posting them. Walking back to work from his cosy home, Pip watches the mouth tighten into a post office again.

Which gesture does Wemmick ask Pip to keep making at his deaf old father, because it is what he likes?

Nodding is the surest way to reach the old man, so Pip nods as hard as he possibly can. Later that evening he keeps it up so long that, he says, he absolutely cannot see the old gentleman any more.

In which of London's legal quarters do Pip and Herbert Pocket have chambers when the convict returns?

The Temple rooms were in Garden Court, at the top of the last house and exposed to the river. On the night of the visit the wind rushing up the water shakes the whole building.

What is the first name of the convict Magwitch, which Pip learns only after the man's return to England?

Abel is the name he says he was christened, though he has no notion where he was born. His first memory is of stealing turnips for a living down in Essex, after a tinker ran off and left him cold.

What does Magwitch carry in his pocket, on his return to England, solely to swear people to secrecy?

A black Testament, greasy and clasped, looked as if it had been stolen from some court of justice. He relies on it like a legal charm, and makes Herbert swear on it before trusting him.

What is the first name of Herbert Pocket's fiancée, who looks after her gouty, rum-drinking father?

Clara is kept a secret from his mother, who would think a ship's purser's daughter beneath the family. Her invalid father stays upstairs, keeping all the household provisions in his room to weigh out himself.

What is the trade of Mr Trabb, whose cheeky shop boy mocks Pip's new finery up and down the high street?

Tailor to the town, he fawns over Pip the moment he hears of the fortune. His boy takes the opposite line, later strutting past Pip with a crowd of friends and crying 'Don't know yah!'

To which lonely building on the marshes does an anonymous note lure Pip, into the hands of an old enemy?

A sluice-house by the limekiln is where he is seized in the dark, tied to a ladder and told his body will go into the kiln. Herbert, who found the note dropped at their rooms, arrives just in time.

Which cousin, once banished for warning Miss Havisham about her suitor, is left £4,000 in her will?

Matthew Pocket was the one relative who never courted her money, which is why Pip had spoken up for him. She added the legacy in her own hand a day or two before her accident, citing Pip's account.

Which costly London club do Pip and Herbert join, whose members dine fortnightly and then quarrel?

The Finches of the Grove existed, as far as Pip could ever tell, so that members could dine expensively, quarrel afterwards and get six waiters drunk on the stairs. His debts begin in earnest here.

Which merchant house takes Pip on as a clerk, and later a partner, after his expectations collapse?

Clarriker and Co. was never a great house and made no mints of money, Pip admits. It had a good name, worked for its profits and did very well, and he lived frugally there until his debts were paid.

In the ending Dickens first wrote and then discarded, on which London street does Pip last see the heroine?

Piccadilly is where she calls him over to her pony carriage to shake hands, then asks to kiss the child at his side, supposing it to be his own. Pip says he was very glad afterwards to have had the meeting.

Which Irish playwright praised the structure of Great Expectations as 'compactly perfect'?

George Bernard Shaw also called the book all of one piece and consistently truthful. In 1937 he brought out an edition that printed the ending Dickens had first written.

Which artist, son of a painter friend of Dickens, drew eight woodcuts for an early edition of Great Expectations?

Marcus Stone was invited to make them for the Library Edition, and stayed on to illustrate the novel Dickens wrote next. One modern Dickens scholar rates the eight pictures as mediocre.

Which patron saint of smiths names the forge song Miss Havisham has Pip sing as he pushes her chair?

Old Clem keeps time with the beat of the anvil, and it caught her fancy so much that she took it up in a low brooding voice, as if singing in her sleep. Her ward would often join in too.

Which good-natured fellow pupil of Pip's takes an oar in the attempt to row Magwitch out of England?

Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home from school, yet stayed devoted to her. Herbert proposes him as a skilled hand who is fond of them and need be told very little.

In which London street, 'just out of Smithfield', does Mr Jaggers keep his gloomy office?

Little Britain holds a room lit only by a skylight, which Pip calls a most dismal place. The great man's own chair is of deadly black horsehair studded with brass nails, like a coffin.

In which fashionable riverside town does Miss Havisham's ward lodge with Mrs Brandley to enter society?

Richmond is where Pip says he suffered every kind and degree of torture she could cause him. Her hostess there had been a friend of Miss Havisham's before the years of seclusion.

In the wild lie Pip tells his family, what does he claim Miss Havisham was sitting in inside her room?

A black velvet coach was only the start: he adds four immense dogs fighting over veal cutlets from a silver basket, and games with flags. Only Joe ever hears the confession that none of it was true.

Which Lloyd Jones novel follows a girl on war-torn Bougainville who is changed by reading Great Expectations?

Mister Pip won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for its New Zealand author. The story is set in a village on a Papua New Guinea island during a brutal civil war in the 1990s.