Q 01/05

In which city was Rudyard Kipling born in 1865?

A) Bombay

B) Calcutta

C) Lahore

D) Delhi

Answer · why

A) Bombay

His father, John Lockwood Kipling, taught architectural sculpture at the newly founded Sir J. J. School of Art there.

Q 02/05

Kipling's unusual first name came from a lake in which English county, where his parents had courted?

A) Staffordshire

B) Cumberland

C) Devonshire

D) Lincolnshire

Answer · why

A) Staffordshire

Rudyard Lake near Leek is a reservoir built in the 1790s to feed the Caldon Canal.

Q 03/05

Which three-time British prime minister was Kipling's first cousin?

A) Neville Chamberlain

B) Stanley Baldwin

C) Ramsay MacDonald

D) Herbert Asquith

Answer · why

B) Stanley Baldwin

Their mothers were two of the four celebrated MacDonald sisters; another married the painter Edward Burne-Jones.

Q 04/05

What did Kipling call the Southsea lodgings where he and his sister were left for six years as children?

A) The House of Desolation

B) The Place of Silence

C) Cold Comfort Farm

D) The Iron Cage

Answer · why

A) The House of Desolation

He blamed Mrs Holloway's cruelty for teaching him to lie, which he called 'the foundation of literary effort'.

Q 05/05

Kipling's schooldays at the United Services College in Devon inspired which story collection?

A) Plain Tales from the Hills

B) Stalky & Co.

C) The Day's Work

D) Debits and Credits

Answer · why

B) Stalky & Co.

He reportedly went into spasms of laughter reading his own jokes from it aloud to the family.