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50 free An Inspector Calls trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
An Inspector Calls is a thriller that never leaves one dining room. A prosperous family is celebrating an engagement when a stranger arrives with news of a dead girl, and by the end of the evening every one of them has confessed to a part in her story, only for the whole thing to be questioned, then confirmed, in the final minute. These 50 questions follow the way the play is taught: what each character did to Eva Smith, what the 1912 setting and the post-war premiere let Priestley say about class and responsibility, the stage directions and sound cues that do the arguing, the short lines students learn by heart, and the productions that kept it alive, from the first London cast to the 1954 film, the 1992 National Theatre revival and the 2015 BBC version. Play it as revision before an exam, or as a test of how well you remember the evening the Birlings would rather forget.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Because every British theatre was booked for the season, in which country did An Inspector Calls premiere?
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union staged it first, at Moscow's Kamerny Theatre and Leningrad's Comedy Theatre, months before any London audience saw it.
Q 02Which liner does Arthur Birling, in a play set in 1912, insist is 'absolutely unsinkable'?
The Titanic
The Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, so a 1946 London audience heard Birling's boast as proof of how wrong the confident Edwardian was. Priestley plays the same trick with his line that 'there isn't a chance of war'.
Q 03An Inspector Calls is set in 1912 but was first staged in which year, as the Second World War ended?
1945
1945 was the year Labour swept to power promising a welfare state, and Priestley's inspector preaches the same collective responsibility. The 33-year gap lets the audience judge the Birlings with hindsight.
Q 04How long did Priestley take to write An Inspector Calls, a speed that still left no London theatre free for it?
A single week
A single week was all Priestley needed for the script, yet every British stage was booked for the season, so the play opened abroad first.
Q 05What do the Birlings conclude about Goole after learning no such officer serves on the local force?
He was a hoax
He was a hoax, the family decide, and Gerald and the elder Birlings celebrate in relief while Sheila and Eric still rue what they did. The call that follows punctures the relief.
Q 06What news ends the play, arriving by telephone just as the Birlings celebrate Goole's exposure?
A policeman is on his way
A policeman is on his way, the caller says, because a girl has just died on her way to the infirmary in a suspected suicide. The curtain falls before anyone can explain Goole.
Q 07Which actor, fresh from the Old Vic, played Eric Birling in the play's 1946 London premiere at the New Theatre?
Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness took the part of the drunken son in October 1946, fresh from the Old Vic and more than thirty years before Star Wars.
Q 08Which actor played Inspector Goole, opposite Ken Stott's Arthur Birling, in the BBC's 2015 television film?
David Thewlis
David Thewlis played Goole in Helen Edmundson's adaptation, first broadcast on BBC One on 13 September 2015, opposite Ken Stott as Arthur Birling.
Q 09Priestley's 1940 BBC Postscripts drew 16 million listeners, second in popularity only to whom?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill alone outdrew him, and the Sunday talks were cancelled amid complaints that they were too left-wing.
Q 10In which fictional industrial city in the north Midlands do the Birlings hold their engagement dinner?
Brumley
Brumley is Priestley's invention, described as 'an industrial city in the north Midlands', which lets the Birlings stand for any provincial manufacturing family.
Q 11Why did Arthur Birling sack Eva Smith from his works, the first link in the chain of events?
Leading a pay strike
Leading a pay strike got Eva Smith dismissed: she had asked for higher wages, and Birling still denies any responsibility for what followed.
Q 12Which department store dismissed Eva Smith after Sheila Birling complained while trying on a dress?
Milwards
Milwards let Eva Smith go at the customer's insistence, costing her a job she had found after a spell unemployed. Sheila later admits the complaint was spite.
Q 13What does Sheila Birling admit was her real motive for having Eva Smith sacked from the shop?
Jealousy of her looks
Q 21Which maid announces Inspector Goole's arrival at the house, interrupting Arthur Birling's after-dinner lecture?
Edna
Edna, the family's maid, shows the stranger into the dining room just as Arthur Birling has finished preaching that a man must look after himself.
Q 22Which honour does Arthur Birling boast he expects in the next list, a hope scandal would wreck?
A knighthood
A knighthood is the prize Birling thinks is coming, which is why his first thought after the Inspector leaves is the scandal, not the dead girl.
Q 23Which actor played the Inspector in the 1954 British film, with Jane Wenham as Eva Smith?
Alastair Sim
Jealousy of her looks is the confession: Sheila had seen the dress look better on the assistant and caught her smiling. It is the first real remorse the Inspector draws out.
Q 14Which name did Eva Smith adopt after losing her shop job, a name that makes Gerald Croft start?
Daisy Renton
Daisy Renton is the alias Gerald recognises at once, and Sheila watches him give himself away before the Inspector has even asked a question.
Q 15Where does Gerald Croft admit he first met Eva Smith, by then driven to prostitution?
The Palace Bar
The Palace Bar is also where Eric later met her after a drinking spree, so the same seedy venue links both young men to her fall.
Q 16In what capacity did Sybil Birling refuse help to a pregnant, destitute Eva Smith?
Patron of a women's charity
Patron of a women's charity, Sybil used her influence to turn the girl away because she had called herself 'Mrs Birling', a name Sybil took as a lie.
Q 17How much money did Eric Birling take from his father's office to support the pregnant Eva Smith?
£50
£50 was roughly £5,000 in today's money, and she refused to take any more once she realised it was stolen. Birling's first worry is getting it back.
Q 18Whom does Arthur Birling ring after the Inspector leaves, to check whether a Goole is on the force?
The chief constable
The chief constable, an old friend, confirms there is no Inspector Goole, which is all Birling needs to declare the whole evening a fraud.
Q 19What does Gerald Croft suggest the Inspector may have shown each family member separately?
A different photograph
A different photograph for each confession would mean several girls, not one, and Gerald's call to the infirmary seems to prove nobody died at all.
Q 20What document does Inspector Goole say led him to the Birlings, naming members of the family?
Her diary
Her diary, Goole claims, records the Birlings by name, and he works through them in turn as if he already knows every answer.
Alastair Sim took the lead in the 1954 film opposite Jane Wenham as Eva Smith, a role the stage play keeps entirely unseen.
Q 24In the 1954 film, the Inspector's surname was changed from Goole to what?
Poole
Poole replaced Goole on screen, dropping the ghostly pun, and in the film it is Gerald who discovers no such officer exists in the town.
Q 25Priestley's opening stage direction says the lighting should change to what once the Inspector arrives?
Brighter and harder
Brighter and harder replaces the 'pink and intimate' glow of the dinner, a cue that the Inspector's questioning will strip away the family's comfortable illusions.
Q 26Which 'sharp' sound cuts off Arthur Birling mid-speech as he praises every man looking after himself?
The doorbell
The doorbell's 'sharp ring' announces the Inspector at the exact moment Birling dismisses community, so the interruption is itself an argument.
Q 27Which word completes Goole's final speech: 'We are members of one ___. We are responsible for one another'?
Body
Body is the word, and the image of society as one organism is the moral of the play, delivered before Goole walks out.
Q 28Goole warns that if men ignore the lesson they will be taught it 'in fire and blood and' what?
Anguish
Anguish completes the line, which a 1946 audience heard as a prophecy of the two world wars that followed the play's 1912 setting.
Q 29Birling scoffs at the idea of community 'as if we were all mixed up together like' what?
Bees in a hive
Bees in a hive is the image Birling mocks seconds before the Inspector arrives to prove the opposite, that every life in the hive touches the rest.
Q 30Arthur Birling repeatedly describes himself with pride as what kind of 'business man'?
Hard-headed
Hard-headed is his boast, and Priestley uses the hard-headed businessman as the vehicle for his attack on capitalism and the arrogance of the wealthy.