Christmas quiz 2023: Round two – Put a name to these faces

Some people are just never far from the headlines, writes Chris Maume. But do you what happened to these individuals this year?

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Who is this, and from which job did she step down in January? Who replaced her, and who replaced him in October?

2. Who is this, and what happened to him in February?

3. Why was the Danish far-right activist Rasmus Paludan banned from entering Britain in March?

4. What did Matt Hancock describe in March as “a massive betrayal and breach of trust”?

5. Who is this, and where was the picture taken, in May? And who was being paid tribute to?

6. In July, Lionel Messi signed for the Major League Soccer club Inter Miami. Which former Barcelona teammate joined at the same time?

7. Greta Gerwig directed the film Barbie, released in July. Which two previous films of hers received Academy Award nominations?

8. What financial record did Taylor Swift set in October?

9. This man became the first person since 1981 to be found guilty of which crime?

10. Who is this, and why was she in the news this year?

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1. Jacinda Ardern stepped down as prime minister of New Zealand, stating that she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job. She was replaced by her NZ Labour Party colleague Chris Hipkins. In October the general election was won by the National Party, whose leader Christopher Luxon became the new prime minister.
2. Jared O’Mara, the former Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam, who was sentenced to four years in prison after being found guilty of four charges of fraud by false representation.
3. The leader of the Stram Kurs (“Hard Line”) party had threatened to burn a Quran during a planned visit to Wakefield in Yorkshire.
4. The leak by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott of his WhatsApp messages sent during the Covid pandemic; he had given them to her while she was helping him write his book Pandemic Diaries.
5. The actor Jared Leto wore a cat costume to the Met Gala, at which guests were asked to honour the late Karl Lagerfeld. Leto was paying tribute to the fashion designer’s cat, Choupette.
6. Sergio Busquets.
7 Lady Bird (2017) was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (which she wrote). Little Women (2019) received six nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (again, written by Gerwig), and won for Best Costume Design.
8. Forbes magazine reported that with a fortune of $1.1bn, Swift was the first musician to become a billionaire with music as the main source of income. In November she was named the most-streamed artist of 2023, with 26.1 billion streams, while in December she was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
9. Jaswant Singh Chail was sentenced to nine years in jail for treason in October; he had broken into Windsor Castle with a crossbow in December 2021 with plans to kill Queen Elizabeth II. The last occasion was in 1981 when Marcus Sarjeant was sentenced to five years for firing blank shots at the Queen when she was on parade.
10. Georgia Harrison, a former Love Island contestant, published Taking Back My Power in October. In it she recounted the story of the sex tape that was released against her will (for which Stephen Bear went to prison); she later announced that she had been in talks with the Labour Party about becoming an MP.

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