Who said, 'The English are free only during the election'?

The correct answer is D, (A) is true but (B) is false. James Mill did publish A History of British India in 1817 in three volumes, so the first statement is correct. The second is not. Mill did not use the labels Ancient, Medieval and Modern; he split India's past into Hindu, Muslim and British periods, treating the first two as ages of superstition and British rule as the bringer of progress. Historians reject that scheme because it fixes a whole age by the religion of its rulers and hides everything else happening beneath. The Ancient, Medieval and Modern division came later, borrowed from European practice, and it too is criticised. A is wrong because the first statement is true, not false. B is wrong because the second statement is false. C is wrong because only one of the two is false. Exam tip: Mill, 1817, three volumes, and the Hindu, Muslim, British periodisation.

The correct answer is C, Girish Karnad. Girish Karnad wrote Yayati in 1961, his first play, which takes from the Mahabharata the story of the old king who asks his son to trade youth with him, and Tughlaq in 1964, on the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq. He wrote in Kannada and translated his own work into English, and his other plays include Hayavadana, Nagamandala and Tale-Danda. He received the Jnanpith Award in 1998 and the Padma Bhushan, and he also worked widely as an actor and film director. A is wrong because Viju Khote was a Hindi film actor. B is wrong because Shreeram Lagoo was a Marathi and Hindi actor and stage director rather than the author of these plays. D is wrong because Mohammed Zahur Khayyam was a music composer. Exam tip: Girish Karnad — Yayati, Tughlaq, Hayavadana, Nagamandala; wrote in Kannada, Jnanpith 1998.

The correct answer is B, Michelle Obama. The Light We Carry is her second book, written after the memoir Becoming, and it sets out the habits and ideas she uses to face uncertainty. Option A is wrong because Hillary Clinton's books include Living History, Hard Choices and What Happened. Option C is wrong because Kamala Harris wrote The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. Option D is wrong because Oprah Winfrey's titles include What I Know For Sure and books written with others on wellbeing. Barack Obama's own books, Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope and A Promised Land, are asked in the same way, so learn which title belongs to which of the two. The pattern in these questions is a set of four well known public figures who have all written books.

The correct answer is B, Samantha Harvey. Orbital, a short novel that follows six astronauts through a day of orbits around the earth, won the Booker Prize in 2024 for the British writer Samantha Harvey. Option A is wrong because Paul Lynch, from Ireland, won the prize the year before, in 2023, for Prophet Song. Option C is wrong because Shehan Karunatilaka of Sri Lanka won in 2022 for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Option D is wrong because Douglas Stuart won in 2020 for Shuggie Bain. As with the Nobel question, the options are the winners of the nearby years, so revise the Booker list as a chain of year, book and author rather than as separate facts, and keep it apart from the International Booker list. The Booker Prize is open to fiction written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.

The correct answer is B, Walter Isaacson. The American writer Walter Isaacson, who had earlier written the authorised life of Steve Jobs and books on Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, published his biography of Elon Musk in 2023 after following him for two years. Option A is wrong, though it is the strongest distractor, because Ashlee Vance wrote an earlier biography of Musk, published in 2015 with a different title. Option C is wrong because Michael Lewis writes on finance and sport, including The Big Short and Moneyball. Option D is wrong because the book is a biography, not a memoir, so it is written by another person and not by Musk. Isaacson's name is worth remembering along with the subjects he has written about, since papers ask the pairing both ways.