Okay, so here's the makings of a Christmas quiz to sustain us over the festive period. It's what I'm going to call a 'Bookcase Quiz', with an autobiographical bent. Basically, I've picked four volumes at random from my shelves and excised a tease of an excerpt from each. Question is, who are the authors?
I hope, not only, that you'll enjoy participating, but that you will look for some quotations from your own shelves so that we can cook up a chain of a quiz. There are only a couple of ground rules. Firstly, that quotations should be from an autobiography and, secondly, that they should be supported by a clue. That can be as obtuse as is liked.
So, to start the ball rolling, I have four excerpts for everyone. Good luck.
SHB Quote 1:
"We opened one of the bottles of champagne with which the suite was cluttered and talked until it was time for me to get ready for the ceremony. We said goodbye and I retired to shave and bathe. When I came back the lady was lying in my bed smiling - with a glass of champagne in her hand. 'For luck!' she said, and we spent the next twenty minutes, without sentiment or pretence, engaged in the eager, impersonal pleasure of making love."
Clue: A unlikely *70s Oscar winner (* two clues in one)
SHB Quote 2:
"The Second World War came and went. I had managed to leave Paris and return to England before hostilities began and was one of the millions who suffered the minor restrictions and the major terrors of this time. I began to receive invitations to give poetry recitals, sometimes alone, sometimes with my brother ******, sometimes with Dylan Thomas, and can remember at least one occasion, when, reciting to a group of servicemen, I heard the familiar, heart-stoping whine of a doodle-bug. Perhaps everybody in that room wondered whether we should throw ourselves under tables or just run for our lives. I went on reading and the bomb passed overhead."
Clue: This poet had another brother also.
SHB Quote 3:
"My grave will, I imagine, be in the next village, a few miles north of Giggleswick. It's a fairly anonymous spot, as our churchyard is full and burials are in the overflow cemetery on the road to the station. It's where my father is buried, pleasant enough and surrounded by trees and fields but without much character. *******'* grave is in the churchyard itself ... Not a bad place to be, I think. Then it comes to me that what I am doing is envying his grave.'
Clue: Two fish out of water they bonded at Oxford
SHB Quote 4:
"Let me, then, end with a few words about my friends. No man, I think, could sustain a long, active and varied life without the boundless dedication of personal friends. I certainly could not have done so. There are some commentators on public life who claim that I have none. I am glad to say they are wrong. I have, and always have had, many friends in all walks of life, but I have taken infinite care to ensure that I did not embarrass them by getting them involved in politics."
Clue: A childless father
I hope, not only, that you'll enjoy participating, but that you will look for some quotations from your own shelves so that we can cook up a chain of a quiz. There are only a couple of ground rules. Firstly, that quotations should be from an autobiography and, secondly, that they should be supported by a clue. That can be as obtuse as is liked.
So, to start the ball rolling, I have four excerpts for everyone. Good luck.
SHB Quote 1:
"We opened one of the bottles of champagne with which the suite was cluttered and talked until it was time for me to get ready for the ceremony. We said goodbye and I retired to shave and bathe. When I came back the lady was lying in my bed smiling - with a glass of champagne in her hand. 'For luck!' she said, and we spent the next twenty minutes, without sentiment or pretence, engaged in the eager, impersonal pleasure of making love."
Clue: A unlikely *70s Oscar winner (* two clues in one)
SHB Quote 2:
"The Second World War came and went. I had managed to leave Paris and return to England before hostilities began and was one of the millions who suffered the minor restrictions and the major terrors of this time. I began to receive invitations to give poetry recitals, sometimes alone, sometimes with my brother ******, sometimes with Dylan Thomas, and can remember at least one occasion, when, reciting to a group of servicemen, I heard the familiar, heart-stoping whine of a doodle-bug. Perhaps everybody in that room wondered whether we should throw ourselves under tables or just run for our lives. I went on reading and the bomb passed overhead."
Clue: This poet had another brother also.
SHB Quote 3:
"My grave will, I imagine, be in the next village, a few miles north of Giggleswick. It's a fairly anonymous spot, as our churchyard is full and burials are in the overflow cemetery on the road to the station. It's where my father is buried, pleasant enough and surrounded by trees and fields but without much character. *******'* grave is in the churchyard itself ... Not a bad place to be, I think. Then it comes to me that what I am doing is envying his grave.'
Clue: Two fish out of water they bonded at Oxford
SHB Quote 4:
"Let me, then, end with a few words about my friends. No man, I think, could sustain a long, active and varied life without the boundless dedication of personal friends. I certainly could not have done so. There are some commentators on public life who claim that I have none. I am glad to say they are wrong. I have, and always have had, many friends in all walks of life, but I have taken infinite care to ensure that I did not embarrass them by getting them involved in politics."
Clue: A childless father
Writing Home, p. 176
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