An Inspector Calls Trivia
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50 free An Inspector Calls trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
An Inspector Calls is a thriller that never leaves one dining room. A prosperous family is celebrating an engagement when a stranger arrives with news of a dead girl, and by the end of the evening every one of them has confessed to a part in her story, only for the whole thing to be questioned, then confirmed, in the final minute. These 50 questions follow the way the play is taught: what each character did to Eva Smith, what the 1912 setting and the post-war premiere let Priestley say about class and responsibility, the stage directions and sound cues that do the arguing, the short lines students learn by heart, and the productions that kept it alive, from the first London cast to the 1954 film, the 1992 National Theatre revival and the 2015 BBC version. Play it as revision before an exam, or as a test of how well you remember the evening the Birlings would rather forget.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Because no London theatre was free, in which country did An Inspector Calls have its 1945 premiere?
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union staged it first, in productions by Moscow's Kamerny Theatre and Leningrad's Comedy Theatre, more than a year before the Old Vic company gave London its first look in October 1946.
Q 02Which brand-new liner does Arthur Birling hold up at dinner as proof of unstoppable progress?
The Titanic
The Titanic, 'unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable' in Birling's words, sank on 15 April 1912, so a 1946 London audience heard the boast as proof of how wrong the confident Edwardian was.
Q 03Which member of the dinner party does Inspector Goole question last?
Eric Birling
Eric Birling is questioned last: he walks back in just after his mother has insisted that whoever got Eva pregnant must take the blame, unwittingly passing sentence on her own son.
Q 04Roughly how long did J. B. Priestley take to write An Inspector Calls?
About a week
About a week is the usual account, and Priestley himself put it at 'about ten days'; even so, no London theatre was free that season, so the play opened abroad first.
Q 05What had Eva Smith swallowed to kill herself, according to Inspector Goole?
Disinfectant
Disinfectant is the detail the Inspector opens with, and Birling later mimics him mockingly ('She drank some strong disinfectant') once he has decided the whole story was invented.
Q 06What news, arriving by telephone, ends An Inspector Calls just as the Birlings begin to relax?
A policeman is on his way
A policeman is on his way, the caller says, because a girl has just died on her way to the infirmary in a suspected suicide. The curtain falls before anyone can explain Goole.
Q 07Which actor, back from wartime service in the Navy, played Eric Birling in the play's 1946 London premiere?
Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness had spent the war in the Navy, commanding a landing craft at the invasion of Sicily, before he took the part of the drunken son at the New Theatre in October 1946.
Q 08Which actor played Inspector Goole, opposite Ken Stott's Arthur Birling, in the BBC's 2015 television film?
David Thewlis
David Thewlis played Goole in Helen Edmundson's adaptation for BBC One, which, unlike the play, goes on following the Inspector after he walks out of the Birlings' house.
Q 09Priestley's 1940 BBC Postscripts drew 16 million listeners, second in popularity only to whom?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill alone outdrew him, and the Sunday talks were cancelled amid complaints that they were too left-wing.
Q 10In which fictional industrial city in the north Midlands do the Birlings hold their engagement dinner?
Brumley
Brumley is Priestley's invention, described as 'an industrial city in the north Midlands', which lets the Birlings stand for any provincial manufacturing family.
Q 11Why did Arthur Birling sack Eva Smith from his works, the first link in the chain of events?
Leading a pay strike
Leading a pay strike cost Eva her job: when the strike failed, Birling took the other women back at the old rates but sacked the 'four or five ringleaders', Eva among them.
Q 12Which department store dismissed Eva Smith after Sheila Birling complained while trying on a dress?
Milwards
Milwards had suited Eva Smith: after her spell out of work she spent a happy couple of months there, until one customer's complaint got her dismissed without warning.
Q 13What does Sheila Birling admit was her real motive for having Eva Smith sacked from the shop?
Jealousy of her looks
Q 21Which maid announces Inspector Goole's arrival at the house?
Edna
Edna is the only working-class character the audience ever meets, since Eva Smith never appears, yet she comes and goes almost unnoticed by the family she waits on.
Q 22Which honour does Arthur Birling boast he expects in the next list, a hope scandal would wreck?
A knighthood
A knighthood is the prize Birling thinks is coming, which is why his first thought after the Inspector leaves is the scandal, not the dead girl.
Q 23Which actor played the Inspector in the 1954 British film, with Jane Wenham as Eva Smith?
Alastair Sim
Alastair Sim's Inspector is shown into the study to wait near the end of the film; when Birling goes back the room is empty, though its only door was in view the whole time.
Jealousy of her looks is the confession: Sheila had seen the dress look better on the assistant and caught her smiling. It is the first real remorse the Inspector draws out.
Q 14Which name did Eva Smith adopt after losing her shop job, a name that makes Gerald Croft start?
Daisy Renton
Daisy Renton is the alias Gerald recognises at once, and Sheila watches him give himself away before the Inspector has even asked a question.
Q 15Where does Gerald Croft admit he first met Eva Smith, cornered by a drunken alderman?
The Palace Bar
The Palace Bar is also where Eric later met her after a drinking spree, so the same seedy venue links both young men to her fall.
Q 16In what capacity did Sybil Birling refuse help to a pregnant, destitute Eva Smith?
Patron of a women's charity
Patron of a women's charity and chair of its committee, Sybil used her influence to have the appeal refused, offended that the pregnant girl had called herself 'Mrs Birling'.
Q 17Where did Eric Birling get the money he gave to the pregnant Eva Smith?
His father's office
His father's office is where Eric took about fifty pounds, asking for cash when he collected accounts; Eva refused any more once she learned it was stolen.
Q 18Whom does Arthur Birling ring after the Inspector leaves, to check whether a Goole is on the force?
The chief constable
The chief constable, Colonel Roberts, is a friend of Birling's, and once he says there is no Inspector Goole on the force, Birling's verdict is instant: 'We've been had.'
Q 19What does Gerald Croft suggest the Inspector may have shown each family member separately?
A different photograph
A different photograph for each confession would mean several girls, not one, and Gerald's call to the infirmary seems to prove nobody died at all.
Q 20Besides a letter, what does Inspector Goole say he found in Eva Smith's room?
Her diary
Her diary is how Goole claims to know so much: in it, he says, she wrote of going away to the seaside after Gerald 'just to make it last longer'.
Q 24In the 1954 film, the Inspector's surname was changed from Goole to what?
Poole
Poole replaced Goole on screen, costing the Inspector a surname that sounds like 'ghoul', the play's hint that its visitor may be something stranger than a detective.
Q 25Priestley's opening stage direction says the lighting should change to what once the Inspector arrives?
Brighter and harder
Brighter and harder replaces the 'pink and intimate' glow of the dinner, a cue that the Inspector's questioning will strip away the family's comfortable illusions.
Q 26Which 'sharp' sound cuts off Arthur Birling mid-speech as he praises every man looking after himself?
The doorbell
The doorbell's 'sharp ring' announces the Inspector at the exact moment Birling dismisses community, so the interruption is itself an argument.
Q 27Which word completes Goole's line 'We are members of one ___', spoken just before 'We are responsible for each other'?
Body
Body is the word, and the image of society as one organism is the moral of the play, delivered before Goole walks out.
Q 28Goole warns that if men ignore the lesson they will be taught it 'in fire and blood and' what?
Anguish
Anguish completes the line, which a 1946 audience heard as a prophecy of the two world wars that followed the play's 1912 setting.
Q 29Birling scoffs at the idea of community 'as if we were all mixed up together like' what?
Bees in a hive
Bees in a hive is the image Birling mocks seconds before the Inspector arrives to prove the opposite, that every life in the hive touches the rest.
Q 30Arthur Birling repeatedly describes himself with pride as what kind of 'business man'?
Hard-headed
Hard-headed is his boast, and Priestley uses the hard-headed businessman as the vehicle for his attack on capitalism and the arrogance of the wealthy.