Test your knowledge of London and Christmas with another challenging quiz.
The London On the Ground London Christmas quiz is back for a second year with another 25 questions on London and Christmas.
For those who love London, Christmas and trivia, please have a go at the quiz.
If you would like to enter, for the pure fun of it, please email your answers before 6pm UK time on 1 January 2024 to londonontheground@gmail.com.
Please write "Quiz Answers" in the subject line and include your name and where you live in the email, as I know London On The Ground has readers in many towns and countries in addition to London.
If you are going to enter, please do not to look up the answers on the internet (pub quiz rules apply)!
I will do my best to publish the answers and announce the winner in a post on this blog on 2 January.
Of course, you can also just try the quiz without sending me your answers.
Staying on a festive theme, a small number of places are still available for 'A Christmas Carol in the City of London', a walking tour on 28 December 2023 at 2.30pm.
For more details on this walk and other London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
Please subscribe to London On The Ground (for free) via the form at the bottom of this page to ensure that you receive email updates on my walking tour schedules and blog posts (including the answers to the quiz).
And now, here it is:
The London On The Ground London Christmas Quiz 2023
1) Which building, of which the picture below is a detail, was declared officially complete by Parliament on 25 December 1711?
2) Which song, recorded in London by London-based artists, was voted Londoners' favourite Christmas song by Time Out readers in 2018?
3) In which season did a London football club last fail to win England's Premier League title after being top of the table at Christmas? Which club?
4) Which popular Christmas pantomime character is based on a real life medieval London merchant?
5) Which journalist and author, who has edited several tabloids and was born in Paddington on Christmas Day 1943, is mother to a well-known TV presenter, whose show has a Christmas special?
6) What Christmas event first took place in Hyde Park in 2005?
7) Which London Underground station name is also a traditional Christmas tree decoration?
8) In which year in the 1960s was the switching on of the Oxford Street lights postponed and why?
9) In Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, at which London building does Scrooge see people discussing his own death (as revealed by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come)?
10) How many different kinds of bird went into a Tudor Christmas pie?
11) Which singer, who died on Christmas Day 2016 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, appeared on both the number one and number two singles in the UK's Christmas chart of 1984.
12) Which band played their Christmas Show over 16 nights at the Astoria in Finsbury Park between 24 December 1963 and 11 January 1964?
13) In which year was the homeless charity Crisis at Christmas founded in London? (a) 1959, (b) 1967, (c) 1981.
14) The last time a game in the top division of English football was played on Christmas Day in London was in 1957. Who scored four goals for Chelsea in its 7-4 win over Portsmouth on that day?
15) In which year was the first documented performance of the pantomime 'Aladdin' staged at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden? (a) 1788, (b) 1823, (c) 1902.
16) Which popular children's fiction character first appeared by name in a short story published in London's The Evening News on Christmas Eve 1925?
17) Which poem, by the London-born creator of the character in question 16, starts with the line 'King John was not a good man'?
18) What was family name of 17th century master-carvers Gerard and his sons John and Mathias, who, among other things, produced figures for several Lord Mayor's Shows?
19) In Old St Paul's Cathedral, a choirboy was elected each year to serve in what capacity from 6-28 December (until the practice was stopped by Henry VIII)
20) Which type of folk play, presented in some parts of the country at Easter or Halloween, is a feature of Christmas/Twelfth Night in the southeast of England?
21) Which film, set in London during the Christmas period and released 20 years ago, is now considered a modern Christmas classic?
22) Which London-born illustrator, who worked for Punch magazine, illustrated Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol in 1843?
23) Which film maker, who was born in Mumbai on Christmas Day 1936 and died in London in 2005, was one half of the longest partnership in independent cinema history?
24) In which year did central London first stage a major fireworks display to welcome the New Year (note, the answer should give the New Year and not the old one)?
25) From 1878 until World War II, where was London's main place for the public gathering on New Year's Eve?
As noted above, I aim to publish the answers on 2 January. Don't forget to subscribe via the form at the bottom of the page to ensure that you receive that and other blog posts by email. You will also see links to my social media accounts at the bottom of the page.
A very Merry Christmas - however you celebrate it - and a very Happy New Year to all readers of the London On The Ground blog and all of you who have joined one of my walks in 2023.
To book your place on 'A Christmas Carol in the City of London', a walking tour on 28 December 2023 at 2.30pm, please click here.
