Questions set by David Cannadine, Clive Ponting, Marina Warner, Brian Brivati, Ian Stewart, Susan Greenfield, Ben Pimlott, Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Christie, John Gray, John Polkinghorne and Terence Hawkes.
The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary on CD Rom together with three recent Oxford University Press titles (pictured below) are on offer to the winner of our festive quiz which has been set by a glittering array of leading academics.
1 Whose mother's brother was president of the Legislative Council of Western Australia, wife's brother was vice chancellor of the University of Wales, and son teaches at the university he himself founded?
2 Who rode a dog named Jouler, crying "Tantivy tantivy"?
3 Which great American novel ends with a green light, a blue lawn and a dream already behind him?
4 Which former people's princess - great-great-granddaughter of Edwin Burnaby, Henrietta Mildred Hodgson, Oswald Smith and Charlotte Grimstead - was born in May- fair, grew up in a house in Piccadilly, and once did the Lambeth Walk and hokey- cokey, incognito, in the street?
5 Which 20th-century American presidents had previously served as presidents of Ivy League universities?
6 What did a Munich mathematician prove impossible in 1882?
7 Who was the first person who developed the EEG for use in human patients?
8 Who missed seeing the film Flames of Passion and who finally made it?
9 A pseudosphere is obtained by rotating which curve about its asymptote?
10 Since 1945 four teams from within the current boundaries of Germany have taken part in the football World Cup. Who are they?
11 Who had twelve feet, six necks, and a bark no louder than a whelp's cry?
12 Why is the cortex of the brain so called?
13 Who was "an indolent peasant crossed with the Queen Mother"?
14 What was the creature from "one of Bessie's tales" that Jane Eyre feared when she heard the clatter of Mr Rochester's horse's hooves?
15 Whose brothers were governor of Jamaica and solicitor-general?
16 Why might the number 40 as opposed to 42 (as in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) provide an ultimate answer for those interested in the mind?
17 Which Wykehamist cuckolded 007?
18 Whose old boss has got the decorators in?
19 Who saw a link between Die Walkure and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?
20 Which old Etonian listens to the Longpigs?
21 Who is spinning a new life of the Prince of Darkness?
22 Which was abolished first - Russian serfdom or American slavery?
23 We know that the four "home" countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland play international football even though they are not recognised as separate states. Fifa recognises 16 other associations as playing international football although their countries are not members of the United Nations. Name them.
24 When did the first man-made object travel faster than sound?
25 Of which secretary of the US Treasury was it observed that three American presidents "served under him"?
26 Who said: "All evil things come from the East - religion and the plague"?
"...that which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet." How do names and roses link a 17th-century English poet and a 20th-century American musician?
28 Who, by taking a French view, introduced a sinking feeling into one of Shakespeare's History plays?
29 Which recently deceased neuroscientist could have been described as the last of the duellists?
30 What did James Joyce contribute to the physics of elementary particles?
Entries should be submitted to Boxing Day Quiz, The THES, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1 9XY, faxed to 0171 782 3300 or emailed to theschat@thes.co.uk. The closing date is January 12th, 1998. Answers in the issue of January 16th.