1. London Fields
    1. Cobbett chose this site to address opposers of the Corn Laws; the Chartists would meet in one of its coffee houses; Lenin edited a revolutionary magazine here; it housed a radical meeting hall founded by John Stuart Mill; and it still commemorates Karl Marx. Name the area.
    2. William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, William Wordsworth, Henry Fuseli and William Godwin were among the freethinkers who attended the dinner parties of this dissenting bookseller and publisher in St Paul's Churchyard. Who is he?
    3. Christmas trees, a naked woman, the Poll Tax, CND and damp New Year's Eves. Name the historic gathering place.
    4. Which street has housed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dame Millicent Fawcett, Charles Darwin, Caspar Melville and Lady Ottoline Morrell?
  2. Taboo-busters
    1. Who, in what work, featured semi-naked women with verses from the Koran painted on their bodies.
    2. Which play depicted a woman being raped in a Sikh temple?
    3. In what dramatic context does Jesus refer to himself as "a bit gay"?
    4. Who, in what work, declared his revolt by gorging himself on pork, ham and bacon?
  3. Hail Mary
    1. Name the following famous Marys
    2. First she fulminated against the iniquities of arranged marriages. Then she pioneered a technique for eliminating invaders — by inviting them in.
    3. "The most eminent female fossilist the world ever knew," she discovered the remains of significant dinosaurs, including the first plesiosaur and several ichthyosaur skeletons, well before the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species.
    4. She worked with her husband while his father looked after the children. And her prize-winning discovery saved millions of lives but cost her own.
    5. Disgust, impurity, food taboos and fetishes — she regards the urge to classify as the basis of universal humanity.
  4. Blasphemy depot
    1. Who was sentenced to imprisonment in the 16th century for challenging the belief that the earth was flat?
    2. Which doctor, human rights activist and rationalist was imprisoned in Pakistan in 2001 under sentence of death, accused of defying the prophet Mohammed. Among his blasphemous pronouncements was the suggestion that the Prophet may not have shaved under his armpits.
    3. Who proclaimed in 1697 that "theology was a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partly of poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras"? And what was his fate?
    4. "The political parties use religion for their own interests and whenever they find any criticism about religion, they can't tolerate it, so they ban the book." Who found her own books banned, and herself banished from Bangladesh?
  5. Halfway to paradise. Name these star-crossed lovers and give brief reasons why you think they did or didn't have a physical affair
    1. He was the professor and she the willing student. He was a Nazi sympathizer, she was a Zionist. They were leading philosophers of their day and obsessed with each other despite their differences. It's not clear how intimate they really were.
    2. He was a playwright, a vegetarian, a socialist and a bit of a dandy. She was a freethinker and writer of children's classics. Theirs was a Fabian relationship but probably not consummated.
    3. C.He was the architect of the permanent revolution. Her work reflected the agony of womanhood. It's rumoured she was very hospitable while he was in exile in her country.
    4. His enlightened views landed him in jail. She was known as the 'philosopher on the throne'. She took many lovers, but no one knows if he was one of them — even though she welcomed him to her Court and bought his library.
  6. Origin of species
    1. A The last of his species, discovered in 1971 on Pinta, he's hefty, lonely and possibly gay. Who is he?
    2. This chinless wonder may have walked upright and fashioned tools. But she's probably less bright than a chimpanzee despite her flowery origins. What Tolkien-inspired fossil was discovered in Indonesia in 2003?
    3. What's big, blue and a miracle of conservation — along with six others in hues of silver, white, pale blue and mottled brown?
    4. What discovery was made by which Czech monk who had a penchant for sweet peas?
  7. Holy Books
    1. "In squaring up to the blessed and perplexing mysteries of life, we must show how human consciousness can be ecstatic and deeply spiritual without the vulgar, sentimental comforts of a god." So wrote the author of a dramatisation of Christ's temptation in the wilderness. Name the writer and the novel.
    2. In which novel, by which author, does a white liberal academic attempt to prevent a black conservative anti-gay Christian giving a lecture series entitled: "Taking the Liberal Out of the Liberal Arts"?
    3. Which writer said of which novelist's criticism of which playwright: "It is the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitudes towards life"?
    4. Which character, in which work, by which writer described the Mass as: "A farce which has cost Christendom more blood than all Napoleon's battles."
  8. Utopias
    1. Every element of this modernist city was designed with a vision of harmony — its layout often compared to the shape of a bird in flight, with a comparable symmetry to its buildings. Name the city, its planner and architect.
    2. In 1825 a Scottish factory owner established a model communal village in Illinois and IndianName the utopia and its founder.
    3. An early advocate of women's rights, and believing that the family unit was oppressive, his ideal was for communities of around 2000 to live together in grand hotels, to be ruled by a World Congress. Name the idealist and the Texas commune he inspired.
    4. In which imaginary land, created by which author, are the sick thrown into prison, machines banned, banks celebrated as the new cathedrals and murderers sent to hospital to be redeemed?
  9. Missing links
    1. What is the connection between the following — and briefly suggest what each answer has to do with humanism?
    2. Aristotle; the goddess Wicca; something slinky; mosquito repellant; the route to a bell tower
    3. Dancing too slowly for the quadrille; a whistling woman; the tails of young dogs; Stephen Jay Gould; postage stamps
    4. Yiddish; Beethoven; sex; Amy Tan; Wordsworth; Leaders of Men
    5. Enid Blyton; sheafs of corn; heaven and earth; monstrous heads; sin; resting; managerial competencies; marital strife
  10. Confessions. Identify the speakers
    1. Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
    2. God, immortality, duty – how inconceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, how peremptory and absolute the third.
    3. Humanism, in all its simplicity, is the only genuine spirituality.
    4. The triumph of the philosophy of atheism is to free man from the nightmare of gods; it means the dissolution of the phantoms of the beyond.

Answers to reach us no later than August 15. Send to [email]quiz@newhumanist.org.uk[/email] or 'Summer Quiz' New Humanist, 1 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HD

Good Luck