Can you match the house to the writer it inspired? – quiz

1. 

   Which children’s novel featuring talking animals was inspired by this property?

   1. The Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith

   2. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

   3. Charlotte’s Web by EB White

   4. Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl

2. 

   Whose tales of amorous country life often feature a fictionalised version of her own home?

   1. Jilly Cooper

   2. Barbara Cartland

   3. Jenny Colgan

   4. Katie Fforde

3. 

   This hut inspired the verse of which poet?

   1. Philip Larkin

   2. Dylan Thomas

   3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

   4. Purple Ronnie

4. 

   Which classic children’s novel was inspired by this stately home in Kent?

   1. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

   2. Peter Pan by JM Barrie

   3. Five Children and It by E Nesbit

   4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

5. 

   Which speculative fiction master lived in this sunny California home?

   1. Philip K Dick

   2. Ray Bradbury

   3. Kurt Vonnegut

   4. HP Lovecraft

6. 

   Who is currently writing their memoir in this purpose-built 'luxury hut'?

   1. Brad Pitt

   2. Nigel Farage

   3. David Cameron

   4. Philip Roth

7. 

   Which of Stephen King’s horror novels was inspired by, and indeed written in, this Maine house?

   1. Pet Sematary

   2. Misery

   3. Carrie

   4. Salem’s Lot

8. 

   Which dystopian classic was imagined here?

   1. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

   2. World War Z by Max Brooks

   3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

   4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

9. 

   Which of Enid Blyton’s series were set in and around her home here?

   1. The Secret Seven

   2. The Famous Five

   3. Noddy

   4. The Mystery series

10. 

    Which reclusive author retreated here?

    1. Thomas Pynchon

    2. JK Rowling

    3. Harper Lee

    4. JD Salinger

Solutions

1:C - EB White lived on this farm in Maine for 48 years, where he raised sheep, geese, chickens, pigs and probably the occasional spider., 2:A - Cooper's infamous setting of Penscombe Court is based this house in Gloucestershire: her own., 3:B - Thomas wrote in this shed, perched on stilts on the cliff above the boathouse in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, where he lived for some of his final years., 4:D - One day in the garden, Burnett was distracted by a solitary robin, leading her to discover a door concealed by ivy in one of the mellow brick walls., 5:B - Sadly, this house where Bradbury lived in for 50 years – found in Los Angeles' Cheviot Hills – was torn down in January 2015, with fan protests coming too late to save., 6:C - The former UK prime minister spent £25,000 on the shed for his Cotswolds garden, with the plan to use it as a writing studio., 7:A - Like the house in the book, there’s a pet cemetery behind the backyard – where King buried his daughter's cat before writing his creepy novel., 8:A - Orwell wrote most of the novel in this house on the Scottish island of Jura between 1947 and 1948, despite being seriously ill with tuberculosis., 9:D - Blyton lived in the 17th-century cottage, called Old Thatch, from 1929 to 1938. She wrote in her diary that it was 'perfect, both outside and in … just like a Fairy Tale house and three minutes from the river'., 10:D - Salinger moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1953, two years after The Catcher in the Rye was published and the same year he released Nine Stories. After the publication of Hapworth 16, 1924 in 1965, he would publish no more novels, withdrawing from public life and dying in 2010.

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