The Christmas quiz: looking back on 2020

Former Nasa astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan

(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

By The Week Staff

last updated 23 December 2020

What is the name of the family that adopted Paddington Bear? And for a bonus point, name their housekeeper.
In David Hockney’s famous painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, who are Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy?
Among his “more h’intimate friends”, how is the Dickens character Jack Dawkins better known?
What was the Christian name of Shakespeare’s only known son?
In poetry, what line follows: a) “If I should die, think only this of me” b) “I was much too far out all my life” c) “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings”?
Who became, shortly before his death in 1976, the first British composer to be awarded a life peerage?
In Beowulf, what is the name of the monster that our hero must slay?
By what names are the novelists Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell better known?
In 1911, Pablo Picasso was arrested by the French police in connection with which dastardly crime in Paris?
Blobism describes a movement in which creative field?
What are the first names of the three children at the heart of The Secret Garden? And what is the surname of the siblings in The Chronicles of Narnia?
Which bestselling novel, from 1992, was set at the fictional Hampden College, in Vermont?
Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel Things Fall Apart takes its name from a work by which poet?
Which novel has a character called Major Major Major Major? And in which would you find Humbert Humbert?
What is Dracula author Bram Stoker’s first name short for?
Reviewing a new book in 1922, Arnold Bennett observed that its author had “made novel reading into a fair imitation of penal servitude”. What was the offending book?