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Past Newsletter Archive:
The Book Club Quiz Question & Answer:
Past Book Quiz Questions & Answers:
December 2016 Question: How many parliamentary electoral contests did Churchill participate in between 1899 and 1955?
Answer: 21
November 2016 Question: Who in Churchill’s words was “At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy…” ?
Answer: The little man
October 2016 Question: In what year did Sir Martin complete the Eighth Volume of the Churchill Biography?
Answer: 1988
September 2016 Question: Why was Sir Martin in Kiev in 1991?
Answer: Sir Martin was in Kiev in 1991 because he had been asked to address a conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar at the end of September 1941.
August 2016 Question: Which history teachers at Highgate School encouraged Sir Martin to learn history and to write it?
Answer: Tommy Fox and Alan Palmer
July 2016 : No competition
June 2016 Question: What was the greatest “weapon” the Allies had in ensuring the success of the D-Day landings, and where was it located?
Answer:
May 2016 Question: On what page in Israel A History did Hannah Billig devote her life to the poor?
Answer: Page 343 of Israel a History
April 2016: On what date was Auschwitz first overflown by an Allied reconnaissance aircraft?
Answer: 4th April 1944 (Bombing Auschwitz: Fact & Myth)
March 2016: What advice did Churchill give the officers of his battalion on 26 January 1916?
Answer: ‘Don’t be careless about yourselves – on the other hand not too careful.
‘Keep a special pair of boots to sleep in & only get them muddy in a real emergency.
‘Use alcohol in moderation but don’t have a great parade of bottles in yr dugouts.
‘Live well but do not flaunt it.
‘Laugh a little, & teach your men to laugh – gt good humour under fire – war is a game that is played with a smile.
‘If you can’t smile grin.
‘If you can’t grin keep out of the way till you can.’ ”
February 2016: How old was Martin when he returned to Britain in 1944?
Answer: Age 7
January 2016: The 20 January 1942 meeting of Nazi and German government officials at the German villa of Wannsee discussed the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. What were the earlier “solutions” perpetrated by the Germans and their collaborators, and what was this “Final Solution”?
Answer: Earlier “solutions”:
Pre-war emigration of Jews from Germany, and Austria, and the Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia (1933-1939).
Incarceration in Ghettos, death by starvation, slave labour and shooting (1940-1944).
Einsatzgruppen specially-trained murder squads in former occupied Soviet lands (1941-1943).
The “Final Solution” was deportation to the death camps (Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Maly Trostenets) where the Jews were gassed upon arrival. (Most Jews deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau were gassed upon arrival; some were used for slave labour.)
December 2015: What brought the United States into the Second World War battle in Europe?
Answer: Hitler declared war on the United States, on 11 December 1941.
November 2015: How many synagogues were destroyed on Kristallnacht?
Answer: More than a thousand.
October 2015: How many children did Winston and Clementine Churchill have?
Answer: Five
Diana Sandys (1909-1963)
Randolph Churchill (1911-1968)
Sarah, Baroness Audley (1914-1982)
Marigold Churchill (1918-1921)
Mary, Baroness Soames (1922-2014)
September 2015 Question: How many Commonwealth realms have Queen Elizabeth as their Head of State?
Answer: The Queen is Head of State of the UK and 15 other Commonwealth realms.
August 2015 Question : What German-made piece of equipment did Britain have to purchase in August 1915 for the Western Front?
Answer: Binoculars
July 2015 Question: What was first used by the British in September 1916 at the battle of the Somme?