The Big Summer Quiz

As the heat rises, can you keep a cool enough head to answer this seasonal quiz?

(Getty Images)

The great outdoors: festivals and events

1 Which festival, which ran from 1968 until 1970 and was revived eight years ago, began as a fundraiser for a local swimming pool association?

2 Which festival, held at Cherry Hinton Hall, began in 1964 and squeezed a late addition on to its first bill, a just-about-to-be-famous Paul Simon?

3 In the Second World War it was a sub-camp for the Flossenburg Concentration Camp in Bavaria. Now it is the home of a world-famous festival. What is it?

4 Stackridge opened, Tyrannosaurus Rex headlined. Where and when?

5 Which major figure from late 19th and early 20th-century British music, whose legacy is a mainstay of the British summer, went by the nickname "Old Timber"?

6 Live Aid's two concerts in 1985 took place in London and which other city?

7 In summer 2000, which village was supplied with 752,000 condoms?

8 In 1931 the landowner and theatrical producer John Christie married the soprano Audrey Mildmay; on their honeymoon they visited the Bayreuth and Salzburg festivals. What did he set about doing when he got home?

9 What was inaugurated in Scotland in 1947 with the aim of providing "a platform for the flowering of the human spirit"?

10 Shepton Mallet, 1982: the bill included The Beat, the Drummers of Burundi, Echo and the Bunnymen and Prince Nico Mbarga. The first what?

The great auteurs: names of books, films & music

1 A coming- of-age story by Edith Wharton

2 More coming of age – in a memoir, 1971 film and novelisation – this time on Nantucket Island during the Second World War

3 A 1967 love poem by Roger McGough and an unconnected (and controversial) 1953 film by Ingmar Bergman

4 One of the biggest-selling singles of all time, released in 1970, it was performed by a British group who took their name from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

5 American rockers Queens of the Stone Age announced their arrival with this drug-referencing hit

6 Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Mongomery Clift in a 1959 Tennessee Williams adaptation

7 This late-1950s teen-angst single partly addressed the controversy in the US about the voting age, which at the time was 21

8 This began its long life in January 1973 as an episode of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse entitled "Of Funerals and Fish"

9 This film featured Adrien Brody in one of his first roles, in which he is mistaken for a serial killer in 1977 New York

10 A big hit in the summer of 1966, heavy on sound effects, this starts with a Volkswagen Beetle horn and ends with a jackhammer '

The great escape: food, drink & holidays

1 What began life in 1823 as a gin-based digestif concocted by the owner of an oyster bar near the Bank of England, who gave the drink his name?

2 Their first was to Greece. The slogan is: 'Make the most of your time on earth.' What does this refer to?

3 Matt's wild cherry; Koralik; Ferline; Legend: all types of what?

4 The cotton mills of Lancashire and Cheshire would close for a week every summer and everyone would head for Blackpool. What was this known as?

5 What links blueberries, cranberries, pumpkins, watermelons and bananas?

6 In July 1841, a Baptist minister organised an excursion for 570 temperance campaigners to go from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough. It would be the first of many trips he would arrange. What was his name?

7 The first harvest festival of the year is an old pagan festival, and falls on 1 August. What is it called?

8 What originated from a chance seedling in New South Wales in the 1860s, thanks to Maria Ann Smith, an orchard owner who'd emigrated from Sussex?

9 In 1953, Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume created which celebratory dish?

10 Wall's began to sell ice-cream on the street in 1924, from tricycles. What five-word slogan did the company use?

The great old days: summers gone by

1 The New Yorker Willis Haviland Carrier worked for a printing company which was experiencing problems due to inconsistency in air quality. In 1902 he devised a solution – and four years later, was granted a patent. For what?

2 On 29 June 1613, a fire broke out when a special-effects cannon misfired during the first recorded production of Shakespeare's Henry VIII. What did it destroy?

3 Midsummer's Day, 2006: Nix and Hydra made their bow. Where?

4 What's the link between Noël Coward and allergic rhinitis?

5 Marble Bar, Australia, 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924. The longest what?

6 It's in Paris, and it grows by six inches during the summer. What?

7 In the US, in the area where Colorado meets Nebraska and Wyoming, what unseasonal weather makes a frequent appearance from May to September?

8 Why was 7 February 2009 known as "Black Saturday" in Australia?

9 What was the so-called "Battle of Beanfield", near Shipton Bellinger in Wiltshire in June 1985, fought over?

10 One hundred and sixty nine of these were built across the UK in the 1930s, taking their name from a beach on the Lagoon of Venice. What are they?

The great pastime: sport & games

1. Which predominantly summer game (in the UK) is believed to have originated in Persia some time before the 5th century BC, when it sometimes featured as many as 100 players a side?

2 Between 2006 and 2009 the Chicago White Sox baseball team began their evening home games at 11 minutes past seven. Why?

3 Which Olympic Games were known as "The Austerity Olympics"?

4 In the 1870s, the game "Sticky" was all the rage. It was short for "Sphairistike", ancient Greek for "the art of playing ball", for which Major Walter Wingfield had been granted a provisional patent in 1874. Soon, though, the game became known by another name. What was that?

5 One hundred years ago last Sunday, in "The Fight of the Century", the white boxer Jim Jeffries was knocked out, sparking race riots across the United States. Who knocked him out?

6 When the New York Giants baseball player Bobby Thomson hit the game-winning home run against the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the National League in 1951, what did it become known as, in a phrase taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson's description of the first clash of the American War of Revolution?

7 In 1998 the lawyer Donna Symonds became the first woman member of which long-running sports commentary team?

8 While out riding near Windsor Castle in 1711, Queen Anne spotted an area of open heath that would be an ideal place for 'horses to gallop at full stretch'. What was the result?

9 Supporters of which relative newcomer to the world footballing stage bought the most tickets for this summer's World Cup?

10 On 19 July 1903, at Ville-d'Avray, outside Paris, at the end of a 1,500-mile journey, Maurice Garin was the first man to do what?