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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 25 general entries.
Special Topics
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Harris, Robert
Tom Jericho. I always pictured Tom looking like Elijah Wood (Frodo from "The Lord of the Rings" movies) but they cast Doughray Scott for the 2002 movie. Very different! (I still think Elijah Wood...I mean WOULD have been better)
Cambridge. Since this novel is about code-breaking you can probably guess he was one of their top mathematics students.
In real life Winston Churchill ordered that "no stone be left unturned when recruiting for Bletchley Park". In 1941 he actually visited the place, took one look at the teams of cryptanalysts and muttered to the director on his way out "I didn't expect you to take me literally."
Hester Wallace. In the movie Hester was played by Kate Winslet. And I thought that was much better casting!
Bletchley Park. Today Bletchley Park is a muesuem. If I ever go to England I'll visit it. (N.B. The name is actually in the quiz's introduction so I hope you got it!)
Alan Turing. Alan Turing is mentioned fairly frequently but we only ever get to see him in Tom's flashbacks. Turing is pretty much the only character in this book who really existed. The story is said to be real (as are all the quoted German signals) but all characters are invented.
Puck. Adam "Puck" Pukowski had fled his homeland when war broke out and ended up working for the English government. He always wondered what had become of the rest of his family, but as we saw later in on, he found out thanks to Bletchley Park.
"Shark" had suddenly been blacked out. Tom was laughing when they said they needed him back because he had been so convinced they were actually about to sack him.
"Shark" was the nickname for the code the German Submarines (U-Boats) used. It was the most difficult one to break, yet Tom had managed it before. Now they needed him to do it again, in less than four days time, because convoys were sailing from New York at that very moment.
Not that they wanted to put any pressure on him or anything.
She won a newspaper crossword competition. After winning "The Daily Telegraph" competition Hester and some of the finalists were taken to Bletchley and put to work there. She was never sure if the newspaper had held the competition at the behest of The War Office or if someone from there had just seen the results of the competition and thought the finalists could be useful.
Hester was pretty much a glorified file clerk which irritated her because she was the actual competition winner and the runner-ups had been allowed to become analysts because they were male.
Patronizing males. Poor Hester. She was typical of brilliant women before and after the war who were never given a chance to prove themselves because of sexist times. It's true that in World War Two women did a lot of jobs previously only done by men, but Bletchley Park did not allow female codebreakers.
Douglas Wigram. When the code Shark is suddenly changed at a crucial moment, there is a lot of suspicion that someone at Bletchley has betrayed them, so Wigram is sent to investigate.
An intercept station. They'd teamed up because both wanted to know what happened to Claire who had disappeared. Tom found undecoded cryptograms hidden in her bedroom but burnt them before Wigram found them. Hester agreed the best solution was to go to the place where the coded messages were first intercepted.
Coded Intercepts. While Hester distracts their guide Tom pretends to have forgotten his scarf and hurries back to get it. When no one's looking he ducks into the filing-cabinet room and quickly searches for copies of the ones he'd burnt. Then the door opens and he thinks the game is up. But it's just one of the radio operators who hands him his scarf.
True. NOTE: They're professionals, don't try that yourself!
Pukowski. He had (with the help of Claire) found out his father or brother had been murdered and buried by the Russians in the Katyn Forest Massacre. So, he'd decided to help the Germans win the war. Even though he did not like them, he hated the Russians more.
This was a very good book and I hope you buy your own copy.
Tiro. Tiro is argued to be a real person who actually wrote an account of Cicero's life, though this is contested.
Sthenius. Heraclius, Sthenius and Epicrates were all agreived, but it was Sthenius who first made his complaint to Cicero.
| Who was Praetor of the extortion court when Cicero handed in his postulatus for the trial of Verres? | Robert Harris' "Imperium"
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Glabrio. It was of course, Glabrio, the friend of Pompey. Gallus was a senator who decided not to run for consul. Galba did run for consul and then withdrew, and Gabinius was one of Pompey's supporters.
| What was the name of Cicero's apprentice who later worked for Crassus, and showed Tiro the hiding place from which Tiro spied on Crassus and Caesar? | Robert Harris' "Imperium"
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Caelius. It was Caelius who showed Tiro the spying place behind the tapestry.
Two. They both died of fever. Quintus and his father, Metellus Pius. survived to the end and voted for Cicero.
Clodius. The staged trial of Catilina involved the miscreant Clodius, who was under the influence of Catilina himself.
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