1. Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960, the biography of an unfairly neglected painter, turned out to be a figment of whose imagination?

   1. Anthony Burgess

   2. William Boyd

   3. Ian McEwan

   4. Julian Barnes

2. Amazons by Cleo Birdwell, a saucy “Intimate Memoir By the First Woman to Play in the National Hockey League”, turned out to be co-written by which celebrated US novelist?

   1. Thomas Pynchon

   2. John Updike

   3. Anne Tyler

   4. Don DeLillo

3. James Frey issued a humiliating public apology for partially fabricating his “memoir” of addiction and degradation, A Million Little Pieces, on which TV show?

   1. Oprah

   2. Richard and Judy Book Club

   3. Newsnight

   4. The One Show

4. Using forged letters, theatrical prankster Ken Campbell convinced many in the industry that the Royal Shakespeare Company had decided to change its name to what?

   1. Les Misérables and More

   2. The Christopher Marlowe Company

   3. The Royal Dickens Company

   4. The Walter Ralegh Company

5. The author was later called 'the greatest liar of all time', but which of these fantastic characters DO NOT appear in his 14th century travelogue The Travels of Sir John Mandeville?

   1. Small orange people with shocks of green hair who are fantastic chocolate-makers

   2. A tribe who subsist on the smell of apples

   3. A race of one-eyed giants

   4. Humans with dog heads

6. Which 18th-century “lost” Shakespeare play closed after one performance when hoaxer William Ireland admitted his subterfuge?

   1. The Sorrowful History of Bottom

   2. Vortigern and Rowena

   3. Cordelia’s Tale

   4. Love’s New Labour

7. Which of these snippets comes from the faked Hitler diaries?

   1. “Must not forget to get tickets for the Olympic Games for Eva Braun"

   2. “Chamberlain is a terrible bore”

   3. “I can find no time for my painting”

   4. “I am sick of these vegetarian meals”

8. Who did 18th-century teenage poet Chatterton ascribe his work to?

   1. William Shakespeare

   2. Fifteenth-century monk Thomas Rowley

   3. Hildegard of Bingen

   4. Historian The Venerable Bede

9. Whose overly prolific output prompted them to invent a publishing alter ego, complete with faked author photo, later killing them off with ‘cancer of the pseudonym'?

   1. Stephen King

   2. JK Rowling

   3. Barbara Cartland

   4. Harold Robbins

10. “We are living in the epoch of the hoax”, said an author whose hoaxes included claims of life on the moon and shocking reports of debauched monks. Who?

    1. EM Forster

    2. William Beckford

    3. Jerome K Jerome

    4. Edgar Allan Poe

Solutions

1:B, 2:D, 3:A, 4:C, 5:A, 6:B, 7:A, 8:B, 9:A, 10:D

Scores

1. 3 and above.

   Brilliant - you've just won a huge prize!<br><br> You probably believe that, too, don't you?

2. 7 and above.

   Not bad, but don't believe everything you read

3. 10 and above.

   Impressively devious. You could get a book deal out of a shopping list