Poets Laureate of the United Kingdom
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40 free Poets Laureate of the United Kingdom trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Britain has had an official Poet Laureate since 1668, and the list of holders is a strange mix: giants of English verse, forgotten court flatterers, and a few writers who are better remembered for something else entirely. Some of the most admired poets of their day turned the job down. This quiz walks through the whole story of the post: who was appointed and when, who said no, how the role and its odd perks have changed, and what laureates such as Tennyson, John Betjeman and Ted Hughes wrote on and off duty. The questions open with the best-known names and work back towards the era of wigs and royal odes. It suits poetry readers, students of English literature, and quiz setters who want a round on a very British institution. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Glasgow-born poet became the first woman appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 2009?
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy was also the first openly lesbian holder of the post, which had gone only to men since 1668.
Q 02Which fortified wine do modern Poets Laureate receive by the barrel, a perk Ted Hughes revived in 1984?
Sherry
Sherry stands in for the Canary wine added to the laureate's pay in 1630, and the barrel Hughes received came to 720 bottles.
Q 03Alfred Tennyson's laureate poem The Charge of the Light Brigade honours a doomed cavalry attack in which conflict?
The Crimean War
The Crimean War saw the Light Brigade cut down at Balaclava in 1854, and Tennyson wrote his tribute within weeks of reading about it in The Times.
Q 04Which American poet married future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes in 1956, four months after the two first met?
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath married Hughes at St George the Martyr in Holborn, and his final collection broke decades of silence about their life together.
Q 05Which London railway station holds a statue of John Betjeman, who led the campaign to save it from demolition?
St Pancras
St Pancras unveiled the bronze in 2007, when the station he helped rescue in the 1960s reopened as the London terminus for Eurostar.
Q 06Which poet became England's first official Poet Laureate in 1668 and was later the only one dismissed?
John Dryden
John Dryden lost the post in 1689 because, as a Catholic convert, he refused to swear allegiance to the new Protestant monarchs.
Q 07Which Romantic poet became Poet Laureate in 1843 only after a promise that nothing would be required of him?
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth first refused as too old, then became the only laureate to write no official verse at all.
Q 08Which Poet Laureate, appointed in 1968, was the father of the actor who won Oscars for My Left Foot and Lincoln?
Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis was the father of Daniel Day-Lewis, and topped up his poetry income by writing detective novels under a pen name.
Q 09Which 1968 children's story by future Poet Laureate Ted Hughes became a 1999 animated film directed by Brad Bird?
The Iron Man
The Iron Man reached American readers and cinemas as The Iron Giant, renamed to avoid confusion with the Marvel hero.
Q 10What kind of toy was John Betjeman's Archibald Ormsby-Gore, the model for Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited?
A teddy bear
A teddy bear went up to Magdalen College with Betjeman, and his Oxford contemporary Evelyn Waugh gave Sebastian Flyte one of his own.
Q 11Which Huddersfield-born poet, once a probation officer, was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 2019?
Simon Armitage
Simon Armitage gave his laureate salary to set up the Laurel Prize for poetry about nature and the environment.
Q 12Which Poet Laureate from 1813 to 1843 wrote the original published version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?
Robert Southey
Robert Southey published The Story of the Three Bears in 1837 with an ill-mannered old woman as the intruder; the golden-haired girl came later.
Q 13Which break with tradition did Andrew Motion stipulate on becoming Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1999?
A ten-year term
Q 21Which poet and Hull university librarian declined the post of Poet Laureate after John Betjeman died in 1984?
Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin was sounded out at Betjeman's memorial service, and the laureateship went to Ted Hughes instead.
Q 22Which author of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard refused the post of Poet Laureate when offered it in 1757?
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published only thirteen poems in his lifetime.
Q 23Which bird gives its name to the 1970 Ted Hughes collection inspired by drawings from the artist Leonard Baskin?
Crow
Crow was written mostly between 1966 and 1969, years Hughes looked back on as a time of creative freedom he never regained.
A ten-year term replaced the appointment for life that laureates had held for three centuries, and his successors have kept to it.
Q 14On whose advice does the British monarch formally appoint each new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom?
The Prime Minister
The Prime Minister has put the name forward since 1790; before that the Lord Chamberlain appointed laureates on royal instructions.
Q 15Which king made Poet Laureate an established office of the royal household by an appointment in 1668?
Charles II
Charles II chose his man after the success of Annus Mirabilis, a poem about the year of the Great Fire of London.
Q 16The title Poet Laureate recalls the laurel wreath worn by which Greek god, the patron of lyric poetry?
Apollo
Apollo wears laurel for the nymph Daphne, who in the myth was turned into a laurel tree to escape his pursuit.
Q 17Which playwright, granted a royal pension by James I in 1616, is sometimes called England's first Poet Laureate?
Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson received 100 marks a year from the king, though the royal family never formally gave him the title.
Q 18Which Dublin-born Poet Laureate gave King Lear a happy ending that stayed on the English stage until 1838?
Nahum Tate
Nahum Tate let Lear regain his throne and married Cordelia to Edgar, and he also wrote the Christmas hymn While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks.
Q 19Which Edinburgh-born writer turned down the post of Poet Laureate in 1813, a year before his first novel appeared?
Walter Scott
Walter Scott felt the laureateship had fallen into disrepute after years of dutiful royal odes, and it went to a friend instead.
Q 20Which former sailor, author of the poem Sea-Fever, was Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967?
John Masefield
John Masefield trained for the sea aboard HMS Conway as a boy, and also wrote the children's fantasy The Box of Delights.
Q 24Which War Horse author devised the post of Children's Laureate together with Poet Laureate Ted Hughes?
Michael Morpurgo
Michael Morpurgo went on to hold the post himself from 2003 to 2005, as the third Children's Laureate after Quentin Blake and Anne Fine.
Q 25Which Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930 had trained in medicine and worked as a London hospital physician?
Robert Bridges
Robert Bridges is the only medical graduate to hold the post, and he won Gerard Manley Hopkins lasting fame by publishing his poems in 1918.
Q 26Which actor-manager, made Poet Laureate in 1730, was crowned King of Dunces in Alexander Pope's The Dunciad?
Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber wrote 30 birthday odes for the royal family, and each tended to be followed by a flurry of anonymous parodies.
Q 27Which Scots title for a national poet has been held by Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead and Jackie Kay?
Makar
Makar is the Scots form of the word maker, and the Scottish Parliament created the national post in 2004.
Q 28Which medieval English poet did Edward III reward with a gallon of wine a day for the rest of his life?
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer received the grant on Saint George's Day 1374, weeks before he became comptroller of customs for the port of London.
Q 29Which English town gives its name to a 1937 John Betjeman poem voicing dismay at its rapid industrial growth?
Slough
Slough was developing fast before the Second World War, and his daughter Candida later said he regretted ever writing the poem.
Q 30In which English county did John Betjeman die at his Trebetherick home and lie buried at St Enodoc's Church?
Cornwall
Cornwall was also the subject of one of the Shell Guides he wrote for motorists, published in 1934.