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Bookwise

Can you name these characters associated with warnings? In which books do they appear, and who are the authors?

1 Travelling to stay with relatives at their Sussex farm, this young woman felt she would meet the Starkadder family in a civilised state of mind if she followed the warning from Abbé Fausse-Maigre's book of Pensées. "Never confront an enemy at the end of a journey, unless it happens to be his journey." She was not consoled.

2 This elf came to Dudley's house and burst into tears. He banged his head on the window, saying he must punish himself grievously for bringing Harry a warning. He would have to shut his ears in the oven door!

3 This king was told that white men sitting on a huge sheep were approaching. He said: "If the White God comes, it is with blessing." But Villacuma said: "Ware you! Your mother Moon wears a veil of green fire. An eagle fell on the temple in Cuzco."

4 This uncultured girl, walking in the fields, reached a padlocked gate. By it was a sign saying: "Beware the Very Furious Bull." Alas! The young illiterate went blindly forward to her fate and ignorantly climbed the gate.

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5 At the Roman fertility festival of Lupercal, a crowd followed this man as he walked in triumph through the streets. Then a soothsayer called to him, his tongue shriller than the music. Three times he called his warning: "Beware the ides of March."

6 A young girl read a book with a warning in verse. It advised a boy to beware of this creature, adding "the jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"

7 A strip of paper pasted on the window of a sweet shop where a young lady worked warned: "If you marry Smythe, he will die!" She had befriended Smythe, a dwarf; he and the squint-eyed Welkin were in love with her. When the dwarf was killed, this priest, an amateur sleuth, found the murderer.

8 When goblins offered fruit for sale, this girl warned her sister, Laura: "We must not look at goblin men,/We must not buy their fruits./Who knows upon what soil they fed/ The hungry, thirsty roots?" Alas, Laura paid the goblins with one of her golden curls.

Bookwise answers: 1 Flora Poste; Cold Comfort Farm (Gibbons); Penguin 2 Dobby the house elf; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling); Bloomsbury 3 Atahualpa; The Royal Hunt of the Sun (Shaffer); Longman 4 Sarah Byng; Selected Cautionary Verses (Belloc); Puffin 5 Julius Caesar (Shakespeare); Pelican 6 The Jabberwock; Jabberwocky; Through the Looking Glass (Carroll); Puffin 7 Father Brown; The Invisible Man; The Best of Father Brown (Chesterton); Everyman 8 Lizzie; Goblin Market (Rossetti); Dover Thrift