How did you do? Here are the answers to the fiendish quiz
John Banville: 1 Rainer Maria Rilke, in the opening lines of the Duino Elegies.
2 Lolita, on the first page of Vladimir Nabokov's novel. 3 Philip Larkin, in the first line of his poem "Aubade".
Mary Beard:1 The Lupercalia (as at the start ofJulius Caesar). 2 Because your successor had to murder you to take the job. 3The Parilia (21 April). The rituals involved leaping over bonfires.
Helen Dunmore: 1 "They" by Rudyard Kipling. 2 Kathleen Drover, in Elizabeth Bowen's story "The Demon Lover". 3 The mezzotint tells the story of the abduction of the infant heir from Anningley Hall, in MR James's "The Mezzotint".
Geoff Dyer: 1 Allen Ginsberg. 2 Fighting in the Captain's tower. 3 Gavin Ewart.
David Hare: 1 Ava Gardner. 2 Charlton Heston. 3 Robert Morley.
Robert Harris: 1 XPD by Len Deighton (1981). 2 The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2004). 3 Operation 10by Hardiman Scott (1982).
John Lanchester: 1 b. 2 True: it was taken from the name of a mysterious "all-permeating fluid" called Vril in his novel The Coming Race. 3 c; Paul Clifford, and yes.
Hilary Mantel: 1Edith Sitwell. 2 Milton. 3 George Eliot.
Terry Pratchett: 1 A small gift from a retailer to a customer – such as a baker's dozen. 2 Joseph Alfred "Jack" Slade. 3 The paige compositor, a forerunner of the linotype machine – Twain lost the equivalent of £8m.
Annie Proulx: 1De Renner; The Rider by Tim Krabbé. 2 Gravlax. 3Life and Laughter 'Midst the Cannibals.
Ian Rankin: 1Bones Are Forever by Kathy Reichs (Dr Tempe Brennan). 2 Tim Burgess, in Telling Stories. 3 Stonemouth by Iain Banks.
Will Self: 1 Luis Buñuel in My Last Breath. 2 Raymond Chandler'sThe Long Goodbye: one part gin to one of Rose's lime cordial. 3 Beer and sandwiches.
Helen Simpson: 1 Falada. Rudolf Ditzen (author of Every Man Dies Alone) took the pen-name Hans Fallada (with an extra L). 2Erewhon. 3 Resurrection.
Claire Tomalin: 1 In 1857, after a performance of The Frozen Deep. She sent for him, he said he would not come since he was in costume; she sent again, and he refused again. 2 Near Boulogne in 1854, when France and England were allied during the Crimean war. 3 Henry VIII; Dickens wrote the line in a letter to his assistant, Wills, when he in the middle of his Child's History of England.
Rose Tremain: 1Death of a Salesmanby Arthur Miller. 2. Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac. 3 To Jefferson, Mississippi, to bury their mother Addie in As I Lay Dyingby William Faulkner.
Sarah Waters: 1 Dorothy Parker. 2 Elizabeth Bishop. 3 Gertrude Stein.
Irvine Welsh: 1 Turkish. 2 Alison Houston. 3 Necrophilia.
The year in question:
1 d; he wrote a prequel.
2 a.
3 d.
4 a; The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home, with Naomi Alderman.
5 a; in Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles (Bloomsbury).
6 d; it's from The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling (Little, Brown).
7 a.
8 d.
9 c.
10 b.
11 b; (Megan Fox, Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie have the others).
12 d, from his Selected Poems (Flambard Press).
13 a; in Scenes from Early Life (Fourth Estate).
14 b,Will Self and Jeet Thayil.
15 b, in The Poetry of the Taliban, edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten & Felix Kuehn (Hurst & Company).
16 c.
17 b.
18 a.
19 b.
20 c.
21 c.
