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Today’s Answers
Another five questions: still a variation on a theme.
One
… Town’s in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity
The opening verse of what poem is shown above? Who wrote the poem; and what place name is missing from the start of the first line?
Answers: Robert Browning; Hamelin.
The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin dates back to the Middle Ages in Germany. It tells the story of a rat-catcher hired by the town of Hamelin to rid them of a rat infestation using his magic pipe. When the townspeople refused to pay him as promised, he retaliated by using his pipe to lure their children away, leading them into a mountain cave, after which they were never seen again. Various theories suggest the story may symbolise the plague or other historical events.
Two
Called both ‘The Bard of the Yukon’ and ‘The Canadian Kipling’, this poet and writer is best known for poems written during the Klondike Gold Rush. Who was he, and what names complete the titles of these poems: The Shooting of … and The Cremation of …?
Answers: Robert W. Service; Dan McGrew; Sam McGee.
Of Scottish descent, Service was born in Lancashire in the north of England and was brought up in both England and Scotland. When his employer, a Canadian bank, sent him to the Yukon, he was inspired by tales of the Klondike Gold Rush, and wrote two poems, The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee. The Whitehorse Star described the birth of one of these as follows — “A bunch of the boys were whooping it up” popped into his head. Inspired, he ran to the bank to write it down (almost being shot as a burglar), and by the next morning The Shooting of Dan McGrew was complete.
Three
What author originally said, ‘The female of the species is more deadly than the male’, and in what work did he originally say it?
Answer: Rudyard Kipling; The Female of the Species.
The Female of the Species is a 1911 poem by Rudyard Kipling that argues females—both in nature and human society—are inherently more ruthless and deadly than males. The poem uses examples such as she-bears and female cobras to illustrate that females act with uncompromising ferocity to protect their offspring and convictions, while males are often weakened by doubt, pity, and a desire for compromise. Written during the height of the British suffragette movement, the poem is widely seen as a controversial response to female militancy, suggesting that while women possess immense moral strength, their single-minded nature makes them unsuited for governance.
Four
Who is the British author of Treasure Island, and where did he die?
Answers: Robert Louis Stevenson; Vailima, Samoa.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet, and travel writer, best known for works like Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped. Despite suffering from serious bronchial trouble throughout his life, he travelled widely and wrote prolifically. He eventually settled in Samoa in 1890, where his writing shifted toward a darker realism before his death from a stroke at age 44. During his lifetime, he was a celebrated figure, and he remains one of the most translated authors in the world.
Five
Who authored the initial three novels in ‘The Bourne’ series? The three volumes share three-word titles starting with The Bourne …: which three words complete these titles?
Answers: Robert Ludlum; Identity; Supremacy; Ultimatum.
The Bourne Identity (1980), The Bourne Supremacy (1986) and The Bourne Ultimatum (1990) are the three Robert Ludlum-written books in question. Following Robert Ludlum’s death in 2001, Eric Van Lustbader took over the Bourne series, writing eleven additional novels to continue the story, who in turn was followed by Brian Freeman, who to 2026 has written a further eight.
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