Monarchs and Royal Houses
The crown has changed hands by conquest, execution, abdication, invitation and act of parliament at least as often as by straightforward inheritance. Norman, Plantagenet, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Hanover, Windsor: eight houses in under a thousand years, and the joins between them are where the good questions live.
Q1.How many wives did Henry VIII have?Tap to reveal
Answer: Six
Q2.Which monarch was on the throne when the Spanish Armada sailed in 1588?Tap to reveal
Answer: Elizabeth I
Q3.Which king was executed outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall in 1649?Tap to reveal
Answer: Charles I
Q4.Which monarch abdicated in 1936 in order to marry Wallis Simpson?Tap to reveal
Answer: Edward VIII
Q5.Who had the longest reign in British history?Tap to reveal
Answer: Elizabeth II
Q6.Which Scottish king inherited the English throne in 1603?Tap to reveal
Answer: James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England
Q7.Which king was the last English monarch to be killed in battle?Tap to reveal
Answer: Richard III
Q8.Which king is usually counted as the first king of all England, from 927?Tap to reveal
Answer: Aethelstan
Q9.Which medieval king was nicknamed Longshanks?Tap to reveal
Answer: Edward I
Q10.Who was the first monarch of the House of Hanover?Tap to reveal
Answer: George I
Q11.Whose reign of nine days ended when Mary I took the throne in 1553?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lady Jane Grey
Q12.Who was the last British monarch to be born outside Britain?Tap to reveal
Answer: George II
Q13.Which monarch was the last to refuse royal assent to a bill, in 1708?Tap to reveal
Answer: Queen Anne
Battles and Wars
The last pitched battle fought on British soil was Culloden in 1746; almost everything after that was fought somewhere else, usually at the end of a long supply line. That single fact reorders the whole military round, because the famous names before 1746 are places you can drive to, and the famous names after it are not.
Q1.In which year was the Battle of Hastings fought?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1066
Q2.Which English king was killed at the Battle of Hastings?Tap to reveal
Answer: Harold II, or Harold Godwinson
Q3.Which king led the English army at Agincourt in 1415?Tap to reveal
Answer: Henry V
Q4.Which two royal houses fought the Wars of the Roses?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lancaster and York
Q5.Which 1485 battle ended the Wars of the Roses?Tap to reveal
Answer: Bosworth Field
Q6.What were the supporters of Charles I in the Civil War nicknamed?Tap to reveal
Answer: Cavaliers
Q7.Which 1645 battle destroyed the main royalist field army?Tap to reveal
Answer: Naseby
Q8.Who commanded the British fleet at Trafalgar in 1805?Tap to reveal
Answer: Horatio Nelson
Q9.Where was Napoleon finally defeated in 1815?Tap to reveal
Answer: Waterloo
Q10.Which 1746 battle was the last pitched battle fought on British soil?Tap to reveal
Answer: Culloden
Q11.Which Scottish king was killed at Flodden in 1513?Tap to reveal
Answer: James IV
Q12.In which war did the Charge of the Light Brigade take place?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Crimean War
Q13.Which 1879 defence in the Anglo-Zulu War saw eleven Victoria Crosses awarded?Tap to reveal
Answer: Rorke's Drift
Q14.Which 1704 victory made the reputation of the Duke of Marlborough?Tap to reveal
Answer: Blenheim
Parliament, Politics and Protest
Parliament rarely gained power in calm weather. Each of the big constitutional dates arrived attached to a crisis: a baronial revolt in 1215, a king's execution in 1649, a king's flight in 1688, a threat of mass disorder in 1832, and a budget the Lords refused to pass before 1911.
Q1.Who was caught guarding the gunpowder beneath Parliament in 1605?Tap to reveal
Answer: Guy Fawkes
Q2.Which document did King John seal at Runnymede in 1215?Tap to reveal
Answer: Magna Carta
Q3.Who is generally regarded as Britain's first prime minister?Tap to reveal
Answer: Robert Walpole
Q4.Which 1707 act joined the parliaments of England and Scotland?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Act of Union
Q5.Which two monarchs took the throne after the Glorious Revolution of 1688?Tap to reveal
Answer: William III and Mary II
Q6.Which prime minister was assassinated in the lobby of the Commons in 1812?Tap to reveal
Answer: Spencer Perceval
Q7.In which city did the Peterloo Massacre take place in 1819?Tap to reveal
Answer: Manchester
Q8.Which 1832 act extended the franchise and redrew the constituencies?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Great Reform Act
Q9.Which prime minister repealed the Corn Laws in 1846?Tap to reveal
Answer: Robert Peel
Q10.Which working-class movement campaigned for the six points of the People's Charter from 1838?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Chartists
Q11.Who was the first woman to take her seat as an MP, in 1919?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nancy Astor
Q12.Who was Britain's first Labour prime minister?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ramsay MacDonald
Q13.Which 1911 act removed the power of the House of Lords to veto legislation?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Parliament Act
The British Empire
For most of its life the empire was run less by the government than by a company, a navy and a scattering of governors improvising a long way from London. The East India Company held Bengal for a century before the Crown took over in 1858, and the wind-up after 1945 was faster than the build-up had ever been.
Q1.In which year did India gain independence from Britain?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1947
Q2.Which company governed much of India before the Crown took direct control in 1858?Tap to reveal
Answer: The East India Company
Q3.Which title did Queen Victoria take in 1876?Tap to reveal
Answer: Empress of India
Q4.Which territory was handed back to China in 1997?Tap to reveal
Answer: Hong Kong
Q5.Which navigator charted the east coast of Australia in 1770?Tap to reveal
Answer: James Cook
Q6.Which 1757 battle gave the East India Company control of Bengal?Tap to reveal
Answer: Plassey
Q7.Which British general died taking Quebec in 1759?Tap to reveal
Answer: James Wolfe
Q8.Which 1842 treaty ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Treaty of Nanking
Q9.Who led the parliamentary campaign that abolished the slave trade in 1807?Tap to reveal
Answer: William Wilberforce
Q10.Which 1833 act abolished slavery across most of the British Empire?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Slavery Abolition Act
Q11.Who commanded the troops that opened fire at Amritsar in 1919?Tap to reveal
Answer: Reginald Dyer
Q12.Which colony became the first in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence from Britain, in 1957?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ghana
Q13.Which 1956 crisis ended the premiership of Anthony Eden?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Suez Crisis
The Industrial Revolution and Victorian Britain
Britain industrialised first, which meant it also met every consequence first: the mill town, the railway timetable, the cholera outbreak and the sewer built to stop it. Most of the names in this round are engineers rather than politicians, which is itself the point about the period.
Q1.Who patented the separate condenser that transformed the efficiency of the steam engine?Tap to reveal
Answer: James Watt
Q2.Which spinning machine did James Hargreaves invent in 1764?Tap to reveal
Answer: The spinning jenny
Q3.Which locomotive won the Rainhill Trials in 1829?Tap to reveal
Answer: Rocket
Q4.Who engineered the Great Western Railway and the SS Great Britain?Tap to reveal
Answer: Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Q5.Which 1851 event was staged in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Great Exhibition
Q6.What was the world's first adhesive postage stamp, issued in 1840?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Penny Black
Q7.Which home secretary founded the Metropolitan Police in 1829?Tap to reveal
Answer: Robert Peel
Q8.Which engineer built London's main sewer network after the Great Stink of 1858?Tap to reveal
Answer: Joseph Bazalgette
Q9.Which miners' safety device did Humphry Davy invent in 1815?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Davy lamp
Q10.Which railway opened in 1825 as the first public line worked by steam locomotives?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Stockton and Darlington Railway
Q11.Which company opened the world's first underground railway in 1863?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Metropolitan Railway
Q12.The failure of which crop triggered the Irish famine from 1845?Tap to reveal
Answer: The potato
Q13.Who became the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain, in 1865?Tap to reveal
Answer: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Modern Britain, 1900 to Now
The twentieth century handed Britain two world wars, the loss of an empire, a welfare state built in the middle of rationing and, eventually, devolved parliaments in Edinburgh and Cardiff. This round is where living memory starts, so it tends to be the section your older players win.
Q1.On what date did Britain declare war on Germany in 1914?Tap to reveal
Answer: 4 August 1914
Q2.Who founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903?Tap to reveal
Answer: Emmeline Pankhurst
Q3.Which suffragette died after being struck by the King's horse at the 1913 Derby?Tap to reveal
Answer: Emily Davison
Q4.What age qualification did the Representation of the People Act 1918 set for women voters?Tap to reveal
Answer: 30
Q5.In which year did women win the vote on the same terms as men?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1928
Q6.Which 1926 dispute brought the country to a nine-day standstill?Tap to reveal
Answer: The General Strike
Q7.Who became prime minister in May 1940?Tap to reveal
Answer: Winston Churchill
Q8.On what date did the National Health Service begin?Tap to reveal
Answer: 5 July 1948
Q9.Which ship docked at Tilbury in June 1948 carrying passengers from the Caribbean?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Empire Windrush
Q10.In which year did Britain join the EEC?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1973
Q11.What was 15 February 1971 known as, when the pound went decimal?Tap to reveal
Answer: Decimal Day
Q12.Which islands did Argentina invade in April 1982?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Falkland Islands
Q13.Which 1998 agreement underpinned the Northern Ireland peace settlement?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Good Friday Agreement
Q14.On what date did the United Kingdom formally leave the European Union?Tap to reveal
Answer: 31 January 2020
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between English history and British history?
Britain as a political unit dates from the Act of Union of 1707, which merged the English and Scottish parliaments. Anything before that is English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish history; the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland then followed in 1801, and became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the Irish Free State was established in 1922.
How do you remember the order of the royal houses?
The traditional mnemonic is No Point Letting Your Trousers Slip Half Way Down: Norman, Plantagenet, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Hanover, Windsor. It covers 1066 to the present and is enough to place most monarchs within a century.
Which British history facts do quizzers most often get wrong?
Three catch people out repeatedly: Magna Carta was sealed rather than signed, Alfred the Great ruled Wessex rather than all England, and the Battle of Britain was fought in 1940 while the Blitz continued into 1941.
How many questions make a good British history quiz round?
Ten to twelve per round is standard for a pub quiz, with about four minutes of answering time. Take a spread across the sections above rather than a block from one, since a whole round on the Industrial Revolution will lose half the room.
What are the main periods of British history?
The usual divisions are Roman Britain to AD 410, Anglo-Saxon and Viking to 1066, Norman and Plantagenet to 1485, Tudor and Stuart to 1714, Georgian to 1837, Victorian to 1901, and modern Britain from 1901.
