Q 01/05

Why does Peter Rabbit's mother warn her four children to stay out of Mr McGregor's garden?

A) Their father ended in a pie

B) The gate is always locked

C) A dog guards the gate

D) The vegetables are poisoned

Answer · why

A) Their father ended in a pie

Their father ended in a pie: Mrs McGregor baked him after he was caught there, which is why old Mrs Rabbit sends her children down the lane instead.

Q 02/05

Which film-maker asked Potter in the 1930s if he could make a Peter Rabbit film, and was told no?

A) Charlie Chaplin

B) Alfred Hitchcock

C) Walt Disney

D) Max Fleischer

Answer · why

C) Walt Disney

Walt Disney went away empty-handed: Potter wrote that she was 'not very hopeful about the result', doubting her pictures would survive being enlarged,...

Q 03/05

What was the first piece of Peter Rabbit merchandise, made and patented by Potter herself in 1903?

A) A wallpaper design

B) A soft toy

C) A tea set

D) A jigsaw puzzle

Answer · why

B) A soft toy

A soft toy of Peter, stitched and patented by Potter herself, was the first licensed character in history, a quarter of a century before Mickey Mouse.

Q 04/05

Because women could not attend, a man read Potter's 1897 paper to the Linnean Society on which subject?

A) Ferns

B) Mosses

C) Beetles

D) Fungi

Answer · why

D) Fungi

Fungi fascinated her: after a decade of drawing them she worked out how their spores germinate, but Kew's director had brushed her off and the paper i...

Q 05/05

How was Potter's diary written, unread until Leslie Linder worked it out in 1958?

A) A secret code

B) Church Latin

C) Pitman shorthand

D) Mirror writing

Answer · why

A) A secret code

A secret code of her own devising hid the journal until Linder spotted 'XVI' and '1793' on one page, guessed at the execution of Louis XVI and unlocke...