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Shirley MacLaine circa 1960.
Shirley MacLaine circa 1960. Photograph: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
Shirley MacLaine circa 1960. Photograph: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

From Shirley MacLaine's past lives to a composer's flamingo carpet: the Observer culture quiz

This article is more than 3 years old

Test your arts knowledge with these questions from our critics

  1. 1.Shirley MacLaine is a firm believer in reincarnation. Which of the following does she not claim as one of her past lives?
  2. 2.Who was the first African American to win an Academy Award?
  3. 3.A UK No 1 by which artist namechecks author Vladimir Nabokov?
  4. 4.Which whisky company uses a modified version of a Landseer painting as its logo?
  5. 5.Who ordered her husband a pink carpet made of flamingo feathers with a border of peacock plumes for his 66th birthday?
  6. 6.Christopher Plummer starred as Captain von Trapp in The Sound Of Music, but he hated working on the film. What was NOT his nickname for it?
  7. 7.Which TV series, later renamed, debuted in the UK in 1983 with the name Woodentop?
  8. 8.Who requested “up to 800 singers”, four brass bands and a full orchestra including 50 violins for one of his works?
  9. 9.Which of the following artists has not painted a label for Chateau Mouton Rothschild?
  10. 10.Alexandra Palace, June 1946, and the BBC resumed television broadcasting, which had been suspended since September 1939, with the line: “Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?” But what had been the primary reason for its suspension?
  11. 11.Helen Mirren was a teenage star at the National Youth Theatre in which part ?
  12. 12.What is the name of the barber’s in Victoria Street, which was opened in Corrie in 2019?
  13. 13.Of whom was it said that he went to Oxford “like a high-pressure executive arriving to take over a dying business”?
  14. 14.“All Grecian, Sir; Tudor details on a classic body.” Who said this of the Palace of Westminster?
  15. 15.Who wrote: “And when you kissed Robert Mitchum / Gee, but I thought that you’d never catch him”?
  16. 16.Who said “less is a bore”?
  17. 17.Who is “All good already, so moved on, it’s scary” as per her UK No 2 chart hit, released in late 2019?
  18. 18.The 60s outfit Three Dog Night are named for an indigenous Australian expression. To what does it refer?
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