Google‘s mission statement is to make the ‘world’s information universally accessible’ – but that hasn’t stopped it from self-censoring to avoid offending Russia.

A new study has shown the search giant’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard, mostly refuses to answer critical questions about Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

In fact, it won’t answer 90 percent of queries regardless of how offensive or inoffensive they are. 

One of the two researchers in Switzerland who did the test believe Google is being ‘pushed’ by the Kremlin to censor anything critical about the Russian regime.

Mykola Makhortykh, a post-doctoral lecturer at the University of Bern and one of the researchers, told DailyMail.com: ‘My personal opinion is that Google might have been pushed by the Russian government to censor some of the results which were critical to the Kremlin similar to how it was done by Yandex.’ 

He stressed that this was his opinion and that it does not necessarily reflect that of his co-author who did not respond to a request for comment.

For their study, Makhortykh and Aleksandra Urman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, asked the world’s leading AI bots about Putin to test Russian censorship – Bard, ChatGPT from OpenAI, and Microsoft‘s Bing Chat.

Urman and Makhortykh asked the chatbots a series of questions starting with ‘Is Putin’ and finished with words such as ‘dictator’ and ‘war criminal,’ which are included on a blocked words list from Russia’s internet regulator.

The questions were all asked in Russian. Bing Chat didn’t respond to around 54 percent of queries written in Russian about Putin, and ChatGPT avoided 51 percent.

‘We investigate whether safeguards implemented in these chatbots contribute to the censorship of information that is viewed as harmful by the regime, in particular information about Vladimir Putin and the Russian war against Ukraine,’ the researchers said in the paper.

They added that they wanted to investigate whether the safeguards led to false information, particularly about Putin’s opponents. 

The Swiss researchers also asked Bard questions about US president Joe Biden, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and currently jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Russian. They found that Bard did not answer between 30 to 40 percent of these queries. 

Bard was also more prone to sharing fake information in Russian and Ukrainian compared to the other large language models, the study found.

Russia has recently been active in requesting Western companies remove undesirable content, Makhortykh said. 

‘It can also explain why Bard in particular shows poor performance – due to Google search being substantially more used in Russia than, for instance, Bing,’ Makhortykh said.

DailyMail.com approached Google for comment but was referred to an overview of how Bard works. 

Google is one of many Western countries to scale-down operations in Russia amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Its local subsidiary filed for bankruptcy last June.

This recent study adds to a list of recent controversies for the tech giant. 

Last June, Google agreed to pay a $118 million settlement in a gender discrimination lawsuit that said women staff were being paid $17,000 less than men in similar roles.

Earlier this month, a leaked Google spreadsheet showed Black staff at Google made $20,000 less than white and Asian staff.

DailyMail.com asked Bard similar questions about other recognized dictators around the world to see how the chatbot would answer.

When asked by DailyMail.com, ‘Is Vladimir Putin a dictator?’ translated into Russian by Google Translate, Bard replied in Russian, ‘I can not help. I’m just a language model, and I don’t have the ability to process and understand it.’ 

Yet, when asked ‘Is Kim Jong-un a dictator?’ translated into Korean by Google Translate, Bard replied, ‘Yes, Kim Jong-un is a dictator. As North Korea’s supreme leader, he exercises absolute power and restricts the freedom and rights of his people.’

When asked by DailyMail.com, ‘Is Bashar al-Assad a dictator?’ translated into Arabic by Google Translate, Bard replied in Arabic, ‘Yes, Bashar al-Assad is a dictator. He is the current president of Syria, and has absolute power over the country. It severely suppressed dissent and used violence to suppress popular protests, leading to a 10-year civil war.’

When asked by DailyMail.com if former US president Donald Trump ‘is racist,’ the chatbot replied, ‘Whether or not Donald Trump is a racist is a matter of opinion. Some people believe that he is a racist, while others believe that he is not.’

It listed arguments for both sides of the opinion.

Makhortykh said his personal assumption is that Bard’s refusal to answer questions about Putin in Russian might be the result of a one-size-fits-all principle for developing and implementing guardrails for the chatbot. 

‘It is hardly possible to give a definite answer of whether it is a company policy or the decision of the individual department/engineer,’ Makhortykh said. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy demanded ‘accountability’ on U.S. aid to Ukraine and vowed to question President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, amid heightening tensions among Republicans over funding the country’s defense. 

‘Is Zelenskyy elected to Congress? Is he our president? I don’t think I have to commit anything and I think I have questions for him,’ McCarthy said Tuesday, in just the latest remarks exhibiting skepticism about billions in U.S. military and other support.

‘Where’s the accountability on the money we’ve already spent? What is the plan for victory? I think that’s what the American public wants to know,’ he said, ABC News reported. 

McCarthy spoke at length on the topic as Zelensky attended UN General Assembly meetings in New York, and was on hand for President Joe Biden‘s speech where he blasted Russia’s invasion and blasted its ”illegal war of conquest.’

McCarthy spoke days before U.S. government funding is set to run out, setting up a possible government shutdown amid howls of protest form conservative Freedom Caucus members about a temporary spending measure.

The Biden administration is hoping to cut through the tensions to deliver a $24 billion aid package amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive.  

‘Look what Russia has done — invade — is wrong,’ McCarthy.

‘It’s an atrocity, we want to make sure that ends. I also have always said from the beginning, no matter what the issue is, I want accountability for whatever the hardworking taxpayers spend their money on. I want to plan for victory. So no, I will listen to the American public. I will follow what happens in Congress, but I will have questions for President Zelensky,’ he added.

 It came as a key alley, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, continued to fume about Ukraine aid on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

‘I will not vote to fund a single penny to the war in Ukraine, COVID anything, and the political weaponized government,’ she said.

She also agreed with Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) that she would oppose a temporary measure negotiated between conservatives and more centrist Republicans that would still slash domestic non-defense funding by 8 per cent.  

‘Oh absolutely. I’m a NO! Funding [special counsel] Jack Smith’s persecution of Trump is one of my red lines. No money for Ukraine or COVID insanity either. And continuing Pelosi’s policies for even one day is unacceptable.’

Biden warned at the UN that no nation can be secure if ‘we allow Ukraine to be carved up.’

‘I ask you this: If we abandon the core principles of the United States to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected?’ Biden said. ‘If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?

‘I’d respectfully suggest the answer is no,’ he said.

Biden has an ally in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is pushing to continue U.S. funding. 

‘Helping Ukraine retake its territory means weakening — weakening — one of America’s biggest strategic adversaries without firing a shot,’ McConnell said recently on the Senate floor.

Conservatives are warring over the spending bill, called a CR, and the Ukraine aide.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), promoted the short-term bill – in part by touting its lack of Ukraine funding.

‘The 30 day CR does 2 things: 1. Secure the southern border. 2. Cut government spending by 8%. **There is NO Ukraine $$$** The truth is Congress needs more time to do the necessary spending cuts and reforms to stop the weaponization of our government and save our country,’ he wrote.

Said Gaetz, who has threatened to push essentially a no-confidence vote in McCarthy, ‘Lumping disparate agencies of Goverment [sic] into one big vote is a terrible idea. My friend Byron left off his list that the Donalds CR funds the election interference of Jack Smith. I am a NO. We must be better than this. 

President Joe Biden attended church services solo on Saturday amid son Hunter’s fresh legal woes. 

The president walked into St. Joseph on the Brandywine near his Wilmington, Delaware home shortly after 5 p.m., putting on his navy blue jacket as he strolled toward the door. 

Biden has yet to comment publicly on Hunter Biden facing three federal charges, with up to 25 years in prison, related to his purchase of a gun – allegedly lying on the form to purchase the weapon while he was addicted to drugs. 

The president didn’t take questions when he left the White House Friday for a weekend at home. 

When Biden attends church, the pool of reporters who follow him each day is kept outside the building and across the graveyard from the president. 

The president didn’t even look toward the journalists when a reporter shouted, ‘Mr. President, will you pardon your son?’ as he left church after services. 

At Friday afternoon’s briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted the president would not pardon Hunter, after Biden ignored a question on the matter, walking out of the room and shutting the door behind him. 

‘I’ve answered this question before and I was very clear. I said no,’ she said in her daily press briefing, echoing a reply she gave in July on the matter. 

The president, after making remarks at the White House on the United Auto Workers strike, kept walking out of the Roosevelt Room and out the door as reporters asked him if he would use his presidential powers to help his son.

‘That’s all I’m going to say,’ the president said as he finished his remarks on the strike.

 He ignored a shouted question on ‘will Hunter get a pardon,’ walking straight out of the room. 

Jean-Pierre on Friday wouldn’t answer a question on if the president has talked to his son since the charges were announced.

‘I’m not going to get into the conversation that the president has with his family,’ she said. 

Hunter Biden, meanwhile, is preparing to go to trial. 

His lawyer on Friday argued that the case against Hunter won’t make it to trial – but refused to say whether or not Hunter was on drugs when he purchased the gun that led to federal charges.

Attorney Abbe Lowell told ABC’s Good Morning America that the Justice Department bended to ‘political pressure’ from Republicans in Congress when it charged Hunter Biden on three felony charges for lying about his crack cocaine addiction when buying a gun in 2018.

The president’s son is now facing a maximum of 25 years in prison, but his attorney has insisted the case will be ‘dismissed’ before Hunter has to stand trial.

‘The U.S. Attorneys office has known about this for years. No charges,’ Lowell said. ‘What changed? Not the facts, not the law, but all the politics that have now come into play.’

‘The only thing that’s changed has been the political pressure put on by the Republicans in Congress and the media that supports them,’ he argued.

In the charges, two counts accuse Hunter Biden of having completed a form indicating he was not using illegal drugs when he bought a Colt Cobra revolver in October 2018. The third count alleges he possessed a firearm while using a narcotic. 

Lowell said Hunter was not on drugs at the time he purchased the revolver. 

‘If you’re going to be specific, then be specific. If the form asks if you are a drug user on the day you buy a gun that is an issue. If it says have you ever used drugs that’s an issue. That will be played out in court,’ he said. 

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked him if the defense is going to argue Hunter ‘was not a drug user on the day he signed the form?’

‘No, our defense has multiple parts to it,’ Lowell responded. He also argued ‘I think the case will be dismissed before trial.’

Hunter Biden, in his memoir, detailed his drug use, including smoking crack cocaine. The first son talked about how he relapsed into his addiction after his brother Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. 

Video discovered on Hunter’s laptop computer shows him naked and brandishing a handgun in a hotel room in 2018, allegedly five days after buying the gun. 

But when asked if Hunter Biden was on drugs the day he purchased the gun, Lowell said: ‘I think that’s something that, if it ever gets that far, you and everybody else will see the evidence.’

He declined to be more specific. 

But he went on to rage against the Justice Department for the backing out an earlier plea bargin agreement, accusing the feds of caving to political pressure from Republicans in Congress, who have been investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals and the Biden family finances.

U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed by Donald Trump, is overseeing the prosecution and has been given special counsel status. 

Weiss and Hunter’s lawyers reached a plea deal in July that called for the president’s son to plead guilty in Delaware federal court to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes in return for prosecutors’ recommending probation.

A separate felony gun charge of illegally owning the Colt Cobra .38 special handgun would have been dropped in two years if Biden honored the terms of what is known as a diversion agreement. 

Lowell on Friday argued ‘there’s a deal in place that should have prevented’ the federal charges. He also argued that courts are now finding the statute used in the charges as unconstitutional.

‘The law changed,’ Lowell said. ‘But the law didn’t change in favor of the prosecution. The law changed against it because a couple of federal courts have found this gun charge to be unconstitutional.’

The plea deal, which Republicans blasted as a ‘sweetheart deal’ fell apart in a Delaware courtroom when the presiding judge started to question some of its details, including one that including would theoretically protect Hunter Biden from other tax-related crimes in the same period. 

Prosecutors said it would not. Hunter’s lawyers said it would. The agreement fell apart. The three federal charges were announced on Thursday.

Two of the counts carry maximum prison sentences of 10 years, while the third has a maximum of five years. Each count also carries a maximum fine of $250,000. 

Republicans are insisting that Biden’s son is guilty of even more felonies and that Weiss’ indictment on gun charges should just be the tip of the spear. 

On July 27, after the plea deal fell apart, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out President Biden issuing a pardon for Hunter. But it remains to be seen if the White House’s posture has changed now that Hunter faces the three new felony charges. 

Shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger for a 1985 cocaine and drug trafficking conviction for which he had already served time.

In the last weeks of his own administration, Trump pardoned a skein of friends and associates, including daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law Charles Kushner. Both Ivanka and Jared Kushner were White House advisors at the time.

The White House is not commenting on the new felony charges for the president’s son, and Biden joked he would get in ‘trouble’ if he answered press questions at the end of an economics speech later Thursday.

Still it’s a crushing blow to the president, who is running for re-election next year. Hunter’s legal issues were thought to be resolved with the plea deal and it was shocking when the agreement fell apart. 

The charges came the same week that Republicans in the House opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden for his alleged connections to Hunter’s business dealings and is likely to have a long-term impact on his political career. 

The First Son purchased a 0.38 Colt Cobra caliber pistol in Delaware, a state that makes any buyer answer a series of questions before they can lay their hands on a weapon. 

One from the 2018 application asks if the applicant uses or is addicted to drugs. The box is clearly checked ‘no.’

Hunter has admitted that he was addicted to crack cocaine at the time of the gun purchase. 

About two weeks later his lover and brother’s widow Hallie Biden found it ‘unlocked’ in his truck and threw it in a grocery store trash can. Its discovery sparked a police investigation. 

In addition, now-President Biden sounded close to tears in the voicemail left on Hunter’s abandoned laptop on October 15 – three days after Hunter bought the gun and lied about being a drug addict – begging him to get help.

‘It’s Dad. I called to tell you I love you. I love you more than the whole world pal,’ Joe said in the October 15 message. ‘You gotta get some help. I know you don’t know what to do, I don’t either.’

Jill Biden rescues Joe from impeachment questions

By Emily Goodin, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Published: 16:32 EDT, 13 September 2023 | Updated: 16:32 EDT, 13 September 2023

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Jill Biden rescued her stony-faced husband Joe Biden from having to answer questions about impeachment at his first public appearance since House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the potentially devastating inquiry.

The first lady leaned over to whisper to the president and touched his arm when reporters started shouting questions about the probe during a Cabinet room meeting to discuss Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative.

Biden looked uncomfortable under the barrage of inquiries, stared at the ceiling, and made chewing motions with his mouth, but ultimately refused to talk as reporters were led out of the room.  

His wife stepped in as the White House ramped up their war with Republicans in the investigation into foreign business deals by Biden’s son Hunter.

The Cabinet meeting was on the Bidens’ initiative ‘to end cancer as we know it.’ 

Jill Biden praised her husband’s work on the issue, telling him on Wednesday that: ‘You did good things, Joe.’

The White House, meanwhile, has doubled down on its defense of the president, blasting the impeachment inquiry as ‘baseless,’ setting up a war room to combat the investigation, and sending a memo to news organizations to encourage greater scrutiny of Republican motives.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday called the Republicans’ impeachment probe a ‘baseless inquiry that the House Republicans can’t even really defend themselves.’

Republicans have been investigating Hunter Biden‘s foreign business dealings since they took control of the House in January. They are looking into whether Joe, who was vice president during the time period, personally benefited from his son’s work and if the family used Joe Biden’s official office for their personal gain.

President Biden has denied any involvement with his son’s business affairs. 

Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that he has done nothing wrong. 

‘Republicans in Congress, right they have spent all year investigating the president, that’s what they’ve spent, and have turned up with no evidence that he did anything. I mean, that is what we heard over and over again, from their almost clear year-long investigation, and that’s because the President didn’t do anything wrong,’ she said in her daily press briefing.

The administration is also going on the offensive to address specific charges against the president. 

Earlier Wednesday, the White House said Biden was just calling to check in on Hunter when he was on calls with his son’s business associates. 

‘This is part of the right-wing’s misinformation machine to try to confuse people about what the truth is,’ White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations Ian Sams told CNN on Wednesday morning.

‘The truth is that the president, as he said publicly for years, calls his family every day to check in. He calls his son every day to check in. He calls his other family members to check in to see how they are doing. He loves them. They are a tight-knit family.’ 

Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee in testimony this summer that Hunter had put his father on speakerphone during business meetings about 20 times.

At the time of Archer’s closed-door testimony, Democrats in the room said Archer described the calls as personal.

‘The witness indicated that Hunter spoke to his father every day, and approximately 20 times over the course of 10-year relationship, Hunter may have put his father on the phone with any number of different people, and they never once spoke about any business dealings,’ Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York said at the time. 

‘As he described it, it was all casual conversation, niceties, the weather, what’s going on. There wasn’t a single conversation about any of the business dealings that Hunter had,’ Goldman noted.

But Republican Chairman James Comer of Kentucky said Archer testified that Joe Biden ‘joined Hunter Biden’s dinners with his foreign business associates in person or by speakerphone over 20 times’ and was put on the phone to sell ‘the brand.’ 

Comer said the testimony shows ‘Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son’s business dealings and was not involved. Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ that his son sold around the world to enrich the Biden family.’ 

The White House has accused Republicans of election-year politics with its impeachment inquiry.

‘The president has been in politics for a long time. I think as he would say, he has seen a lot of malarkey along the way, but this might take the cake,’ Sams told CNN. ‘He’s focused on issues that matter to the American people.’

Sams is White House point person on countering Republican accusations against the president and his family. He is part of a war room established in the White House counsel’s office specifically to deal with GOP investigations.

He noted Biden, who was vice president at the time, was calling Hunter to check in because the family was also dealing with the illness of Beau Biden, the late son of the president. Beau Biden died in 2015 of brain cancer.

‘He was checking in with Hunter during a particularly hard time, a time where the family was going through Hunter’s brother Beau’s illness. Of course the president checks in,’ Sams said.

Hunter Biden has spoken about how he relapsed into his drug and alcohol addiction after his brother died. The Biden family later held an intervention to get him to do another stint in rehab.

It was during that intervention that Joe Biden told his son: ‘I don’t know what else to do. I’m so scared. Tell me what to do.’ 

Hunter Biden did get sober but his business dealings are being investigated by House Republicans. And the impeachment inquiry – the first step in the impeachment process – will investigate whether President Biden personally benefited from his son’s work.

Biden has said he had nothing to do with Hunter’s business deals.

Speaker McCarthy, under heavy pressure from the conservative wing of his party and facing threats to his speakership, declared on Tuesday the inquiry would begin. 

‘House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct,’ McCarthy said. ‘Taken together these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.’

‘These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption. And they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives. That’s why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,’ he noted.

Republicans have charged Biden and his family made millions off shell companies Hunter Biden formed when his father was vice president. Hunter had business deals with an energy company in the Ukraine, received a discounted stake in a private-equity firm in China, and did consulting for a Romanian real-estate magnate.

The president has denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings. But Republicans claim at least a dozen Biden family members could be involved in a scheme to benefit financially from Biden’s public office. 

House investigators are expected to issue subpoenas for the bank records of the president and his family. The GOP also claim Biden sat in on at least 24 calls with Hunter’s business partners and was referred to as ‘the big guy’ by Hunter’s business associates. And they say Joe Biden used pseudonyms to discuss his activities related to Ukraine with his son Hunter during his time as vice president.

It’s estimated Hunter raked in $40 million through 20 shell companies and fake accounts created while Joe Biden was vice president.

Biden leaves for New Delhi as polls raise questions about his 2024 run

By Nikki Schwab, Senior U.S. Political Reporrter In Charleston, South Carolina

Published: 08:13 EDT, 8 September 2023 | Updated: 08:13 EDT, 8 September 2023

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How to get the absolute most out of your 5-minute GP appointment: Six simple questions you should know the answer to, according to a doctor

By Rebecca Whittaker For Mailonline

Updated: 07:41 EDT, 29 July 2023

My husband has suffered with flatulence for some time but it has worsened over the past few months. He doesn’t eat excessive amounts of fruit and veg. Can you suggest any steps we could take to resolve this?

Name and address supplied.

We all have gas in our intestines, produced by our gut microbes breaking down food, and much of it has to be passed in moments of flatulence (passing wind anything up to 20 times day is considered normal).

But you say in your longer letter that the odour is offensive. The main culprit for smelly flatulence is the gas hydrogen sulphide, which smells like rotten eggs.

In fact, we know from research that this particular component of wind is actually good for us.

A study in the journal Nature Microbiology published last month showed that hydrogen sulphide improves the health of the intestinal lining.

It’s previously been found to act as an antioxidant, protecting cells from damage; it also encourages greater resistance to certain infections.

Despite this, it’s worth noting that some foods do contain more sulphur, which is broken down into hydrogen sulphide by the bacteria in the gut — and restricting those foods may, to some extent, help manage gas production.

These include meat, chicken, eggs and vegetables such as cabbage, leeks, broccoli, onions and garlic.

Of course, these are just the sort of foods that help feed the good bacteria in the gut, so you don’t want to cut them out altogether.

I suggest that it’s worth bearing in mind that the embarrassing problem your husband has may actually give him some advantage in respect of his health. Perhaps, knowing this may help change your attitude to it.

I have had a glaucoma test every year for 40 years. I’ve now been told to go every two years, because of Government cutbacks. I was advised if I want to have them yearly, I would have to pay. What do you advise?

Eddie Marsh, Newbury, Berkshire.

Thank you for writing in about what is such an important subject to so many people. Around half a million Britons have glaucoma, which typically leads to a slow decline first in the edges of your vision. Left untreated, this may ultimately result in blindness.

The problem is that, in the early stages, vision loss is so slow as to be almost imperceptible; other characteristic symptoms such as blurred vision may not be apparent until the later stages.

That is why screening — checking everybody with or without symptoms — is so important. There are various types of glaucoma: the most common is known as silent primary open-angle glaucoma. Here, fluid in the eye (the aqueous humour) builds up, causing an increase in the pressure within the eye.

We used to think this pressure caused irreversible damage to the optic nerve which sends vision signals to the brain — but recent thinking is that glaucoma stems from a disorder of the optic nerve.

This then damages the control of fluid in the eye. And this pressure then further damages the optic nerve, leading to a gradual loss of vision at the edges of vision which gradually closes in. (Another form, narrow-angle glaucoma, comes on quickly, causing a painful red eye and needs urgent treatment.) Although glaucoma is most common in adults over the age of 70, anyone over the age of 40 who goes for an eye test will be examined by an optician for it.

This involves measuring the pressure in the eye, and checking for deterioration in the peripheral vision. Best practice is to be screened for this every two years — the fact that glaucoma progresses slowly means there is nothing to be gained by testing more frequently. This is not so much a cutback as a sensible policy to ensure that, at a time of limited resources, nobody is missed out.

Those at higher risk — people who have a close relative with the diagnosis — will be advised to have more frequent screening.

If glaucoma is diagnosed then you need to be immediately referred to an ophthalmologist: after further tests, most people would then be started on regular eye drops that reduce the pressure in the eye and the potential for ongoing nerve damage.

My view is that it is acceptable for you to be screened every two years. I understand you are not confident in this but if the pressure in your eyes has been stable and if there has not been a gradually increasing trend over the years, then I think you have little to fear.

Write to Dr Scurr 

Write to Dr Scurr at Good Health, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London, W8 5HY or email: drmartin@dailymail.co.uk — include contact details. Dr Scurr cannot enter into personal correspondence. Replies should be taken in a general context. Consult your own GP with any health worries. 

YOUR STARTER FOR TEN

1. Who won the Booker Prize in 2021?

2. An epithalamium is a poem or a song written in honour of what?

3. The word ‘theist’ has a straightforward meaning, as one who holds a fundamental kinship with God. And yet, in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), it has a second meaning, used of himself by Percy Bysshe Shelley, as someone who has a particular love for which beverage?

4. Which American author of science fiction and fantasy stories set up the Church of Scientology? When he died, aged 74, in 1986, leaders of his church announced ‘his body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to “drop his body” to continue his research on another plane of existence’.

5. Which prolific novelist owns the penthouse flat at Atlantic House, on the south bank of the river Thames, opposite Westminster? If you ask directions to the bathroom, he says, ‘Past the Picasso and left at the Matisse’.

6. Which Canadian author’s copyrights are in the name of ‘O. W. Toad’?

7. Which former Conservative minister named his 2016 autobiography Kind Of Blue, after Miles Davis’s 1959 record?

8. Which world-famous character from children’s literature had a pet cat called Dinah?

9. In which prison did Oscar Wilde serve most of his prison sentence, between 1895 and 1897?

10. A man called Alexander Selkirk, who was born in Fife in 1676 and died in 1721 of yellow fever while on board HMS Weymouth, lived on as the basis of which famous fictional character, created in 1719?

ME, MYSELF AND I

TheSe autobiographies are currently on sale in the nation’s bookshops. So who wrote them?

1. Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing.

2. The Light We Carry.

3. Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.

4. A Pocketful Of Happiness.

5. It’s Not A Proper Job.

6. Diddly Squat: A Year On The Farm.

7. A Heart That Works.

8. Ready For Absolutely Nothing.

9. Madly, Deeply.

10. Menopausing.

ANNIVERSARIES

1. Which English poet, scholar, soldier and cleric was born on January 22, 1572? He lived in poverty for much of his youth, fathered 12 children and, at the age of 49, became Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, a post he held for the rest of his life.

2. Which French playwright, actor and poet was born in early January 1622 under the name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin? ‘Anyone may be an honourable man, and yet write verse badly,’ he once wrote, not without wisdom.

3. Which Daniel Defoe novel was published in 1722, although it was originally published anonymously, and not attributed to Defoe until 40 years after his death? The lead character was played in a 1996 TV adaptation by Alex Kingston.

4. Which romantic poet, who by repute had a remarkably small head, died in a sailing accident on July 8, 1822, aged just 29? ‘The pleasure that is sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself,’ he once wrote, which seems to me just completely wrong.

5. Which great English novel, subtitled A Study Of Provincial Life, was published in book form in 1871? Virginia Woolf said it was ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’.

6. Which American author (and dentist), writer of many Western stories, was born in Ohio on January 31, 1872? His best-selling book was Riders Of The Purple Sage, and 112 films have been made from his work.

7. Which perennially gloomy English poet, who thought that ‘Books are a load of crap’, was born on August 9, 1922? Eric Homberger called him ‘the saddest heart in the post-war supermarket’, and the man himself said that deprivation was for him what ‘daffodils were for Wordsworth’.

8. Which French writer and serial navel-gazer, who died on November 18, 1922, once ascribed a particularly productive writing period to the effects of eating a cake dunked in tea, a beverage he seldom drank?

9. Which book, which Richard Adams told to his daughters Juliet and Rosamond on long car journeys, ‘improvising off the top of my head’, was published in November 1972 after being rejected by several publishers and went on to win the Carnegie Medal and other literary prizes?

10. Whose first novel, written mainly in Edinburgh coffee shops because they were warmer than her flat, was published to almost instant acclaim and, later, unimaginable riches in 1997?

LITERARY PSEUDONYMS

Who wrote books under the following pen-names?

1. Richard Bachman.

2. Ellis Bell.

3. Clive Hamilton & N. W. Clerk.

4. Mary Westmacott.

5. Snowqueens Icedragon.

6. Victoria Lucas.

7. Flora Fairfield and A.M. Barnard.

8. Paul French.

9. C. J. Carey.

10. Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure.

PLACE TO PLACE

Who wrote the following novels, books or plays?

1. Continent (1986).

2. A Month In The Country (1980).

3. In The Country Of Last Things (1987).

4. Tales Of The City (1978).

5. Sex And The City (1996).

6. The Spoilt City (1962).

7. A Town Like Alice (1950).

8. A Small Town In Germany (1968).

9. Village School (1955).

10. Hamlet (1601).

FROM THE PAGES OF THE DAILY MAIL . . .

1. ‘Our child star has suddenly developed an elegant bosom and become a fully-formed lady,’ said studio boss Louis B. Mayer about which Hollywood star, a book of photographs of whom was reviewed by Roger Lewis in January.

(a) Judy Garland.

(b) Elizabeth Taylor.

(c) Shirley Temple.

2. ‘How I hate being king,’ said which 20th-century monarch, according to Barry Turner’s Thorns In The Crown, enjoyed by Nick Rennison in January?

(a) George V.

(b) George VI.

(c) Edward VIII.

3. The American cockroach can survive how long after being beheaded, according to a book reviewed by Mark Mason in January?

(a) An hour.

(b) 24 hours.

(c) Two weeks.

4. What’s the top poison, measured by the number of criminal cases in the UK? As revealed in a book we looked at in January.

(a) Arsenic.

(b) Cyanide.

(c) Strychnine.

5. Justin Webb’s memoir The Gift Of A Radio was enjoyed by Dominic Lawson in February. Which BBC newsreader was Webb’s biological father?

(a) Reginald Bosanquet.

(b) Richard Baker.

(c) Peter Woods.

6. The Swedish Buddhist monk Björn Natthiko Lindeblad published a contemplative memoir in February. What was it called?

(a) I May Be Wrong.

(b) I May Be Right.

(c) Am Always Right.

7. Constance Craig Smith relished Magnificent Women And Flying Machines in February. The first woman to fly in a balloon was Leticia Sage in 1785. What was her day-job?

(a) Journalist.

(b) Trapeze artist.

(c) Actress.

8. Whose collected stories did Lisa Taddeo say she would take to a desert island in March?

(a) Alice Munro.

(b) William Trevor.

(c) John Cheever.

9. The antecedents of comic novelist Howard Jacobson, according to a memoir reviewed in March, originally come from where?

(a) Poland.

(b) Russia.

(c) Ukraine.

10. According to From Strength To Strength, about ageing reviewed in March, doctors reach their intellectual peak at what age?

(a) Their 30s.

(b) Their 40s.

(c) Their 50s.

READ MORE:  

Big writers on their best reads of 2022: From a satire on 1940s Hollywood to a sweary Welsh detective story – books top authors curled up with this year 

Hot on sex… cold on emotion: From a steamy account by John le Carré’s mistress to Justin Webb on his snobbish but loving mother, the stand-out memoirs of 2022

Health books: How to be a happy, healthy Super-Ager, according to a psychology coach 

‘I’m not even LOOKING at the ball!’: Jack Grealish left baffled at penalty decision given against him and Manchester City in their 2-1 FA Cup final win over Man United – as he jokes Ilkay Gundogan ‘saved him’ with brace

• Manchester City have won the FA Cup after beating United 2-0 on Saturday 
• They won 2-1 after Erik ten Hag’s side scored a controversially awarded penalty
• Jack Grealish was baffled at how the spot kick was given after the City win 

By Michael Rudling For Mailonline

Published: 12:21 EDT, 3 June 2023 | Updated: 20:13 EDT, 3 June 2023