I was let out of my cell yesterday to join some other writing colleagues at Broxbourne School in an effort to beat the best young literary brains in the London region at a Literary Quiz. Our team consisted of M.G. Harris, Echo Freer, Matt Whyman and me. We were pretty confident until we saw the opposition! These young folk really know their books! And there were lots of them.

The teams gather ...

There were eight authors present. Aside from the four team members, there were: Amanda Lees, Pauline Francis, Gareth Mottram and Lee Wilkinson. The authors who were not a part of the team were given the tough jobs of marking the 10 rounds of questions and compiling the scores for the leaderboard.

It was a close run contest and the authors were up in the mix for the entire competition. We were eventually beaten (by half a point … fix, I say, fix!!) into second place by the fantastic team of girls from the City of London School for Girls, whose combined knowledge of children’s literature was most impressive.

M.G Harris presenting the worthy winners with their prizes.

I’d love to know what the Quizmaster, Wayne Mills, (standing just behind M.G. and pointing) was saying to M.G. as she prepared to hand out the money! Suggestions?

The best caption will win a hardback copy of Gone by Michael Grant - my personal pick of the new books in 2009.

Anyone can have a go … including the other captives, if you like. You have until the end of next week.