2024 Christmas quiz: the answers

Events, dear boy

1. Cheddar cheese

2. Cooper’s Hill

3. Mary Poppins

4. By breaking away and running loose for six miles through London while being exercised by Life Guards of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment (they recovered from their injuries)

5. Sir Winston Churchill

6. The Courtauld Gallery

7. Copenhagen

8. Victoria Wood

9. Jupiter

10. Robert F. Kennedy Jr

You don’t say

1. George Galloway on winning the Rochdale by-election

2. Lord Kinnock (on Mr Galloway’s defeat in the general election)

3. The Prince of Wales, on growing a beard

4. Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg

5. Rishi Sunak, on announcing his resignation

6. Sir Keir Starmer

7. President Joe Biden

8. Donald Trump, when a bullet hit his ear

9. The King, following tradition at the state opening of parliament

10. Sir Lindsay Hoyle the Speaker

Not just for Christmas

1 Thomas Hardy

2. Thy Servant a Dog

3. Charles Dickens

4. Alfred, Lord Tennyson

5. Sir John Harington

6. Emily Dickinson

7. Alexander Pope

8. William Wordsworth

9. William Morris

10. Jeeves to Bertie Wooster in Very Good, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Annual royalties

1. Denmark

2. Norway

3. To horses

4. Anne, Princess Royal

5. The Princess of Wales

6. Canberra

7. The Prince of Wales

8. A slice of wedding cake

9. The Duchess of Edinburgh

10. The RSPB

Fond farewells

1. Ian Lavender

2. Dame Maggie Smith

3. Dame Shirley Conran

4. Sir John Nott

5. C.J. Sansom

6. Frank Ifield

7. Michael Mosley

8. Michael Tanner

9. Peter Higgs

10. Frank Duckworth

Unwrapping the clues

1. Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

2. G.K. Chesterton, ‘The Flying Stars’ from The Innocence of Father Brown

3. Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

4. Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’

5. P. D. James, ‘The Mistletoe Murder’

6. Margery Allingham, ‘The Snapdragon and the CID’

7. Michael Innes, There Came Both Mist and Snow

8. Nicholas Blake, The Case of the Abominable Snowman

9. Edmund Crispin, Holy Disorders

10. Ngaio Marsh, Artists in Crime