The Week’s Christmas quiz: looking back on 2022

Obituaries

1. For which film did Sidney Poitier win his groundbreaking best actor Oscar?

2. Myra Gale Brown was the controversial third wife of which late rock’n’roll star?

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3. Robbie Coltrane made his name as a dramatic actor playing a criminal psychologist in the TV series Cracker. What was his character’s name?

4. Which country music star’s memoir was entitled Coal Miner’s Daughter?

5. Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell cemented her literary reputation. Name the three books, in order of publication.

6. What is the name given to the boy in Raymond Briggs’s much-loved book The Snowman?

7. Which maverick British scientist devised the Gaia theory?

8. “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage.” Who said this?

9. Which globally renowned painter moved from Portugal to England as a teenager to escape the Salazar regime?

10. Which actress voiced the singing teapot, Mrs. Potts, in Disney’s 1991 version of Beauty and the Beast?

11. This composer wrote a piece of music called Panic that caused panic at the BBC, when it was schedule to be performed on the Last Night of the Proms. Who was he?

Answers

1. Lilies of the Field

2. Jerry Lee Lewis

3. Eddie “Fitz” Fitzgerald

4. Loretta Lynn

5. Wolf Hall; Bring Up the Bodies; The Mirror & the Light

6. Trick question: the book is wordless so he is not named; but in the TV film he is called James

7. James Lovelock

8. Peter Brook

9. Paula Rego

10. Angela Lansbury

11. Harrison Birtwistle