Michelle Pauli 

Brothers and sisters in books

As the Milibands prepare to battle it out for leadership of the Labour party, test your knowledge of sibling strife and cooperation in the literary world
  
  


  1. What was the fictional country created in a series of stories by Charlotte Brontë and her brother, Branwell?

    1. Heathia

    2. Serenia

    3. Happia

    4. Angria

  2. William and Dorothy Wordsworth had another poet sibling, John. He died in 1809. How?

    1. Laudanum overdose

    2. Of melancholia

    3. In a duel

    4. In a shipwreck

  3. Jane Austen's brothers James and Henry created a weekly literary periodical aimed at Oxford university students. What was it called?

    1. The Lurker

    2. The Trotter

    3. The Loiterer

    4. The Idler

  4. And what was the Sitwell siblings' series of literary anthologies called?

    1. Kneels

    2. Wheels

    3. Heels

    4. Surreals

  5. What jobs did the Brothers Grimm do while collecting and publishing their volumes of fairy tales?

    1. Librarians

    2. Civil servants

    3. Spinners

    4. Soldiers

  6. Which writer's sister has laid into him for basing characters on family members and ex-girlfriends and wives?

    1. Ian McEwan

    2. Dan Brown

    3. Hanif Kureishi

    4. Martin Amis

  7. “It is jolly annoying when you spend two years writing a decent book and somebody comes along to interview you about being your sister’s sister.” Who said this?

    1. Margaret Drabble

    2. AS Byatt

    3. Dianne Rowling

    4. Joan Collins

  8. Evelyn Waugh's older brother Alec was a bestselling novelist. He is also credited with inventing a social event. What?

    1. The cocktail party

    2. The key swapping party

    3. Pimms o'clock

    4. The wedding breakfast

  9. Which of the Mitford sisters said: "Objectivity? I've always had an objective"?

    1. Jessica

    2. Nancy

    3. Diana

    4. Unity

  10. Which of these is NOT a quote from one of the Hitchens brothers?

    1. "We're not close. We're different people, we have different lives, we have entirely different pleasures, we live in different continents. If we weren't brothers we wouldn't know each other."

    2. Many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind".

    3. “The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.”

    4. "He is my most beloved friend and my bitterest rival, my confidant and my betrayer, my sustainer and my dependent, and scariest of all, my equal."

Solutions

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

Scores

  1. 3 and above.

    Based on your showing here, the literary siblings you most resemble are Goneril and Regan: sisters of mutually assured destruction

  2. 5 and above.

    Based on your showing here, the literary siblings you most resemble are the Weasley brothers: not the brightest tools in the box but full of surprises

  3. 8 and above.

    Based on your showing here, the literary siblings you most resemble are the March sisters: those bright, hardworking, cheerful Little Women

 

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