In a style befitting our 50th Anniversary year, the RNA team bravely took on the literary world’s best and brightest at the 2009 Colman Getty Pen Quiz in November.

There was no doubt the team added to the glamour of the evening, as they set their minds to fiendishly hard questions posed by quizmaster David Mitchell of Mitchell and Webb fame.

It is amazing the things we knew… the menu munched by The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the colour of Samuel L Jackson’s light sabre in Star Wars. We recognized the cut of Daniel Defoe’s wig, and knew our Booker Prize winners.

Unfortunately, not even an in-depth knowledge of the duets performed by David Bowie was quite enough. The Times, The Guardian and Harper Collins tied for first place. The Times team took the title in a sudden-death quiz-off.

We might not have won the quiz, but team member Liz Harris won a selection of fine whisky in the raffle.

The night was a lot of fun, with the added pleasure of knowing the money was going to support PEN’s efforts to promote literature as a means of greater understanding between the world’s people.