Q 01/05

Which flowers did William Wordsworth immortalise in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud after a lakeside walk with his sister?

A) Bluebells

B) Daffodils

C) Primroses

D) Snowdrops

Answer · why

B) Daffodils

Daffodils gave the poem its popular nickname, and his wife supplied the two lines he thought its best. A BBC Radio 4 poll in 1995 ranked it the UK's f...

Q 02/05

Which singer alludes to William Wordsworth in The Lakes, a 2020 bonus track about escaping to the Lake District?

A) Lana Del Rey

B) Florence Welch

C) Phoebe Bridgers

D) Taylor Swift

Answer · why

D) Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift released the song on the deluxe edition of her album Folklore. Its lyrics dream of a quiet retreat near Windermere, far from social media...

Q 03/05

What sight in the sky thrills the speaker of William Wordsworth's My Heart Leaps Up, written one night at Grasmere?

A) A rainbow

B) A skylark

C) A comet

D) A full moon

Answer · why

A) A rainbow

A rainbow gives the poem its other title, The Rainbow. Royal Mail chose an extract from it for a 2020 stamp marking 250 years since the poet's birth.

Q 04/05

What did William Wordsworth campaign against in old age with a protest sonnet and letters to a London newspaper?

A) A lead mine

B) A reservoir

C) A railway

D) A cotton mill

Answer · why

C) A railway

A railway from Kendal to Windermere would, he argued, wreck the Lake District landscape. The line opened anyway in 1847, and one of its engineers answ...

Q 05/05

Which poet and artist claimed a passage in Wordsworth's The Excursion gave him a near-fatal bowel complaint?

A) William Blake

B) Edward Lear

C) D. G. Rossetti

D) William Morris

Answer · why

A) William Blake

William Blake told the diarist Henry Crabb Robinson so, and Robinson passed the remark on in a letter to Wordsworth's sister. Blake otherwise loved th...