Famous Personalities Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Sir Walter Scott was the Wizard of the North.

The Scottish novelist and poet published the Waverley novels anonymously, and the mystery around their authorship, together with their vast popularity, earned him the name. He wrote Ivanhoe, Rob Roy and The Lady of the Lake.

Answer: B

Lord Chesterfield wrote the famous letters to his son.

Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, wrote more than four hundred letters to his natural son Philip on manners, worldly conduct and the art of pleasing; they were published after his death in 1774.

Answer: A

Dinesh Trivedi resigned for reasons unconnected with corruption.

The Railway Minister quit in March 2012 after his own party, the Trinamool Congress, objected to the passenger fare increases in his railway budget - a resignation over policy. A. Raja and Dayanidhi Maran left over the 2G spectrum case, and Virbhadra Singh over corruption charges.

Answer: D

Ali Akbar Khan played the sarod.

Son and disciple of Allauddin Khan of the Maihar gharana, he was among the first Indian musicians to perform in the West, playing in New York in 1955, and Yehudi Menuhin called him the greatest musician in the world.

Answer: C

Sardar Patel is called the Indian Bismarck.

The comparison is with Otto von Bismarck, who welded the German states into one empire; Patel brought 562 princely states into the Indian Union between 1947 and 1949.

Answer: C

Amjad Ali Khan plays the sarod.

He is the sixth generation of the Bangash lineage of sarod players, whose ancestors developed the instrument from the Afghan rabab. He received the Padma Vibhushan in 2001.

Answer: C

Nicolas Sarkozy was the President of France.

He held office from 2007 to 2012 and was the chief guest at India's Republic Day in 2008 - the fifth French leader to be so honoured.

Answer: D

Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt is an exponent of the Mohan Veena.

It is his own creation: a Hawaiian slide guitar modified with twenty strings, including sympathetic and drone strings, so that it can play Indian classical music with full gamak and meend. He won the Grammy in 1994 with Ry Cooder for A Meeting by the River.

Answer: D

Ronald Reagan was a film star before becoming President.

He appeared in some fifty films from the 1930s and served twice as president of the Screen Actors Guild, then became Governor of California in 1967 and President in 1981.

Answer: D

Graham Greene was associated with literature.

The English novelist wrote The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American and The Third Man, dividing his own work between serious novels and what he called entertainments.