The Times lit quiz

[Newby]

It's that time of year again, folks...shall we?

[Ray The Grey]

Very well done, I've been puzzling over those two and not making any ground at all!

[captainandy]

WhiskeyPriest/KenPilot: Excellent!
So, Cars 1 was Iris Murdoch after all.

[Flapwing]

Well done chaps - good hunting!

[goldeneye85]

I think Quareels 4 is definitely Michael Henchard in "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and Quarrels 5 is Vladimir and Estragon in "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett.

[Ray The Grey]

Hello, can't find Critic in Waiting for Godot having had a quick look through

[kenpilot]

well done goldeneye. It is waiting for godot - the argument ends with them swapping insults -
sewer rat
curate
cretin
critic
Has anyone got anywhere with cemeteries 1 and 3?

[Flapwing]

Some thoughts on Cemeteries 1:
Ford madox Ford ? Ernest hemingway? Siegried Sassoon?
All Quiet on the Western Front? Pat Barker? Faulks (but have looked and can't find anything.....?

[Flapwing]

Cemeteries 3 ...I mean...

[greatsage]

Quarrels 5. Well done goldenye and kenpilot. I couldn't find it at first when I also checked. But then it is not 'critic!' in the text but 'crritic!'. Looks like a ploy to google-proof the question. May mean some lateral thought is also required on the 3 remaining stinkers.

[goodfriday]

Cars 2. I tried to Google this and came up with Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard - character called Nirad Das. I haven't seen or read this play and I can't seem to find my source again.

Thanks for Cars 1. I had thought it was Mr Toad

Do we have an answer for Doctors 3? I thought it might be Dr Doolittle

[Flapwing]

Doctors 3 is Dr Moreau H G Wells.

[Flapwing]

Good Friday - well done. It is indeed Nirad Das. An Indian painter in love with Flora Crewe. He tosses a mango at her car.

[goodfriday]

Thanks, flapwing. What are we left with?
I keep thinking proof-reader/war cemetery might be a WW1 poet, or All quiet on the Western Front or something like that.

Cemetries 1 is istill a puzzle to me - Ian McEwan??

[phoenixxx]

You may be right - could cemetries 1 be the cement garden? In which case it is the mother who is buried in the basement. Don't know her name though.

[phoenixxx]

Having read the film review I am not so sure. This states that the mother is concealed in the basement in a locker.

Any other ideas?

[goodfriday]

Some further ideas:

Cemeteries 3. Any anyone link this to Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, or to Dorothea in Middlemarch (didn't she proof-read for Casaubon?)

Also,, what about William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, for Cemeteries 1? Don't know if this was written too early for a power drill, but book revolves around the death of Addie Bundren, whose body is taken back to Jefferson to be buried with her family. Holes are drilled in her coffin, but probably with a manual drill!

[phoenixxx]

I have skimmed As I Lay Dying but don't think electricity features Faulkner writes about a lantern etc which suggests there was no electricity.

[Ray The Grey]

GB Shaw - for the inscription??

[Lys de Beaum]

Hello - Is there anyone there? Have you got the answers to all the questions or have you given up?

[Ray The Grey]

Still looking for the last two - more complicated now...