Q 01/05

Which future fantasy author taught at Oxford while Mary Renault studied there and left a deep mark on her?

A) Mervyn Peake

B) Charles Williams

C) J.R.R. Tolkien

D) T.H. White

Answer · why

C) J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien lectured there during her years at St Hugh's College in the 1920s, and his rejection of literary modernism impressed her. She later bur...

Q 02/05

Which American president, asked who his favourite author was, replied with the name Mary Renault?

A) Lyndon B. Johnson

B) John F. Kennedy

C) Richard Nixon

D) Dwight D. Eisenhower

Answer · why

B) John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy picked a novelist who was no trained classicist: her Oxford degree was in English. The Last of the Wine was the first of her eight nov...

Q 03/05

Which young-adult saga was partly inspired by Mary Renault's Theseus novel The King Must Die?

A) Ender's Game

B) Divergent

C) The Hunger Games

D) The Giver Quartet

Answer · why

C) The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games drew partly on her 1958 book, Suzanne Collins has said. Renault had turned the Labyrinth into an arena where captive Athenian youths ...

Q 04/05

Mary Renault wrote The Last of the Wine after emigrating in 1948 to which country, her home until death?

A) South Africa

B) Australia

C) New Zealand

D) Southern Rhodesia

Answer · why

A) South Africa

South Africa let her live openly with her partner, Julie Mullard, first in Durban and then in Cape Town. She later travelled to Greece but never went ...

Q 05/05

The Last of the Wine ends with hints of the trial of Socrates, who was later executed with which poison?

A) Nightshade

B) Wolfsbane

C) Oleander

D) Hemlock

Answer · why

D) Hemlock

Hemlock was the sentence an Athenian jury passed on Socrates in 399 BC, after convicting him of impiety and corrupting the young. Aged 70, he carried ...