q3

[dubdobdee]

3.

i: Who was returned for Condaford in the general election?
ii: In what election were 45 green umbrellas used to influence voters?
iii: In which constituency was Mr Browborough’s election reversed due to bribery?
iv: In which West Indian constituency was the election “sweetness done and turning sour”?
v: Which crusader’s ultimate election was so prolonged that electors were threatened with starvation?
vi: Who won the election, having engineered the demise of the four favourites, and then chose self-cremation?
vii: Which MP for Aylesbury was expelled, but later headed the poll when he stood for Middlesex?
viii: Who spoke in support of the Liberal candidate in Brattleburn, a Tory stronghold?
ix: Whose supposedly forged red letter led to the government’s electoral defeat?
x: Whose election was declared by Albert Theophylus Despard-Smith?

INCOMPLETE: we need vi and viii!

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Apologies for no question yesterday, I was on an important pub crawl.

As for these, I don't even know if they're historical or fictional: if fictional (which I suspect), xi can't be the Zinoviev letter, which is what first springs to mind. Have at em foax.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

Definitely not all fictional - see v.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

v is a papal election, but I can't remember whose. The Cardinal-Electors were locked in the chapel and fed on bread and water to encourage them to break their deadlock. Historically, this was part of the gradual move to the modern system of wholly secret conclaves.

vii is obviously some time ago, because of the mention of a county seat.

ix looks like the Zinoviev Letter, although the details elude me.

x sounds like a British TV comedy thing, but I can't remember if it's Blackadder III (Baldrick at Little-Dunny-on-the-Wold, loser from the 'standing at the back dressed stupidly and looking stupid party') or Monty Python's 'Election Night Special' (losers include Mr Ole-F'tang-F'tang-Biscuitbarrel and all that). Not Yes Minister, because I'm fairly sure Hacker was supposed to represent a Midlands constituency for which that Returning Officer's name would be too absurd.

[(Anonymous)]

Re v. We're any popes actual crusaders? I'd thought it was maybe the election of the Holy Roman Emperor, maybe Frederick Barbarossa, a definite crusader?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

was barbarossa ever elected? he was an emperor, don't they inherit titles (or seize them by war)?

(also can i again request that entrants append some kind of recognisable cognomen in the body of their answer posts if they aren't signing in to LJ? primary reason: to avoid a multiple carcrash of anons…)

edit: it seems this was lj user = carsmilesteve

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

The Holy Roman Emperors were indeed elected - according to the Golden Bull of 1384 (or thereabouts - Wikipedia will tell us tomorrow) they were to be elected by the seven leading princes of the Empire, namely the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Köln, the King of Bohemia, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Duke of Brunswick, and the Duke of Bavaria. Subsequent changes added the Elector Palatine of the Rhine and one other that I can't remember. Napoleon tried adding a bunch more - the Duke of Hesse and the Archbishop of Salzburg, but Franz II (for whom Haydn wrote 'The Emperor' eg the tune of the Deutschlandlied) abolished the Holy Roman Empire and made himself hereditary Emperor of Austria instead, so Napoleon's electors never voted.

There may have been imperial elections that were threatened with starvation - I forget - but it wouldn't be particularly misleading to refer to, eg, Pope Urban II as a crusader. (Assuming I have remembered correctly and he was the one who called the First Crusade in 1099.)

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

This is driving me nuts, especially the 45 green umbrellas. At one point I was wondering if the self-cremation question referred to "The Five Orange Pips," but I'm pretty sure the winner actually drowned in that case.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I think the green umbrellas are from Dickens? Although might be some other preachy victorian novellist?

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

see, I was thinking Taiwan, since one of the major parties there has green as its main color (and the KMT is blue, iirc).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Could be anything to do with Hong Kong's Umbrella Protests? Though wiki suggests they were yellow....

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that, but they're not green and there haven't been any recent elections there!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

GOOGLING IT UP:

i. This is apparently one Mr Dornford from the Forsyte Saga (Book Three?): " A nice man, well read, not bigoted. He even sympathised with Labour, but did not think they knew their way about as yet. In fact he was rather notably what the drunken youth in the play called: 'A Tory Socialist.' "

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

MORE GOOGLE-O:

x. is the equally awesomely named Dr Redvers Arbuthnot Crawford, from C.P. Snow's The Masters. He beats Dr Paul Jago to the mastership of a Cambridge college (Jago is apparently unacceptable because is wife is from.... BIRMINGHAM - the horror).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

GOOGLE-ME-DO:



vii: is the 'ugliest man in England' John Wilkes, Lord Mayor and reformer whose Wikipedia page is full of gold dust:

He was a member of the Knights of St. Francis of Wycombe, also known as the Hellfire Club or the Medmenham Monks, and was the instigator of a prank that may have hastened its dissolution... Wilkes reportedly brought a baboon dressed in a cape and horns into the rituals performed at the club, producing considerable mayhem among the inebriated initiates.

And he had a duel with the 1st Earl of Talbot:

At a range of eight yards, Talbot and Wilkes both fired their pistols but neither was hit. Somewhat reconciled, they then went to a nearby inn and shared a bottle of claret.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

"St. Francis of Wycombe"!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

GOOGLED:

ii: the "47 green umbrellas" were a bribe for voting wives in a local election in the pickwick papers, see here for

iv: is from v.s.naipaul's the nightwatchman's occurrence book: and other comic inventions", albeit slightly misquoted!

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

well done -- I couldn't find it. still wistful the answer didn't involve Brigitte Lin in some way, though

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

SO FAR:

i. Mr Dornford (Forsyte Saga)
ii. The Eatanswill election (Pickwick Papers)
iii.
iv. Trinidad - er, possibly somewhere slightly more specific than this! (V.S. Naipaul)
v. Pope Gregory X (the election took THREE YEARS!)
vi.
vii. John Wilkes (what a dude)
viii.
ix. Grigory Zinoviev (Alex is right - the Labour minority govt lost the 1924 election because of it)
x. Dr Crawford (The Masters)

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

vi isn't The Sign of the Four either. ARRGH. It might be The Big Four, given that we've had Christie references in two other sets. It might not be a mystery at all and I'm just taking everyone down the wrong path. ARRRGH, again.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

iii) is Tankerville, from a novel in Anthony Trollope's Palliser series, Phineas Redux. This seems wilfully obscure, even for Wiki-illiam, but still 100% googleable (phew).

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

trollope is very much one of mr wiki-illiam's staple topics (along with buchan, kipling and agatha christie)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Next year I shall be PREPARED :)

[sbp.livejournal.com]

> viii: Who spoke in support of the Liberal candidate in Brattleburn, a Tory stronghold?

This looks like this year's 39 Steps question.

"'You find me in the deuce of a mess, Mr — by-the-by, you haven't told me your name. Twisdon? Any relation of old Tommy Twisdon of the Sixtieth? No? Well, you see I'm Liberal Candidate for this part of the world, and I had a meeting on tonight at Brattleburn — that's my chief town, and an infernal Tory stronghold. I had got the Colonial ex-Premier fellow, Crumpleton, coming to speak for me tonight, and had the thing tremendously billed and the whole place ground-baited."

So, Twisdon, then.