Q 01/05

Which Glasgow-born poet became the first woman appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 2009?

A) Wendy Cope

B) Carol Ann Duffy

C) Elizabeth Jennings

D) Kathleen Jamie

Answer · why

B) Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy was also the first openly lesbian holder of the post, which had gone only to men since 1668.

Q 02/05

Which fortified wine do modern Poets Laureate receive by the barrel, a perk Ted Hughes revived in 1984?

A) Port

B) Madeira

C) Marsala

D) Sherry

Answer · why

D) Sherry

Sherry stands in for the Canary wine added to the laureate's pay in 1630, and the barrel Hughes received came to 720 bottles.

Q 03/05

Alfred Tennyson's laureate poem The Charge of the Light Brigade honours a doomed cavalry attack in which conflict?

A) The Crimean War

B) The Boer War

C) The Napoleonic Wars

D) The Zulu War

Answer · why

A) The Crimean War

The Crimean War saw the Light Brigade cut down at Balaclava in 1854, and Tennyson wrote his tribute within weeks of reading about it in The Times.

Q 04/05

Which American poet married future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes in 1956, four months after the two first met?

A) Anne Sexton

B) Elizabeth Bishop

C) Sylvia Plath

D) Adrienne Rich

Answer · why

C) Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath married Hughes at St George the Martyr in Holborn, and his final collection broke decades of silence about their life together.

Q 05/05

Which London railway station holds a statue of John Betjeman, who led the campaign to save it from demolition?

A) Paddington

B) King's Cross

C) Euston

D) St Pancras

Answer · why

D) St Pancras

St Pancras unveiled the bronze in 2007, when the station he helped rescue in the 1960s reopened as the London terminus for Eurostar.