Lesson 4.2.1.3

4.2.1.3 Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks Quiz: AQA English Literature A, Unit 2

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson 4.2.1.3, Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA English Literature A (7712), Unit 2: Texts in shared contexts, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. Birdsong is a novel by which author, first published in 1993?

    • R.C. Sherriff
    • Pat Barker
    • Erich Maria Remarque
    • Sebastian Faulks

  2. Which character is the young English engineer who falls in love with Isabelle Azaire in France?

    • Michael Weir, a sergeant who serves under Stephen
    • Stephen Wraysford, an engineer who loves Isabelle
    • Weir, a tunnelling officer who commands the men
    • Jack Firebrace, a tunneller from a mining family

  3. In which year is the love affair in Birdsong set, before the war?

    • 1945, in the aftermath of the Second World War
    • 1910, in the French city of Amiens
    • 1930, in the years of the economic slump
    • 1880, in a village in the north of England

  4. Which battle forms the central setting of the war sections of Birdsong?

    • the Battle of the Somme
    • the Battle of Britain in the skies
    • the Battle of Jutland in the North Sea
    • the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium

  5. What is the role of Jack Firebrace in the novel?

    • a French factory owner who employs Stephen as an engineer
    • a journalist who reports on the front from Paris
    • a tunneller whose underground work exposes the war's grim conditions
    • a military judge who sentences soldiers for desertion

  6. Which technique does Faulks use to connect the two timelines?

    • a chorus commentary written in rhyming verse
    • a single continuous chronology with no breaks at all
    • a series of newspaper cuttings from the period
    • alternating chapters between the prewar love story and the war

  7. Which element of the war is depicted through the tunnelling sections?

    • the claustrophobic and dangerous work of mining under enemy lines
    • air combat in the skies above the front
    • naval combat at sea between large battleships
    • diplomatic negotiations in the palace at Versailles

  8. What is the significance of Elizabeth in the later sections of Birdsong?

    • She is Stephen's granddaughter, who discovers his story in 1978
    • She is a German spy who infiltrates the British lines
    • She is Isabelle's sister, who lives in Amiens in 1910
    • She is a nurse who works at the Somme in 1916

  9. Which statement best describes the novel's attitude to the war?

    • It celebrates the strategy of the commanders in the field
    • It conveys the horror and waste of trench warfare through harrowing detail
    • It ignores the trenches and focuses on the home front
    • It presents the war as a glorious adventure for young men

  10. How does Birdsong present the relationship between love and war?

    • love is a source of meaning that war attempts to destroy
    • love is irrelevant to the experience of war in the trenches
    • war always ends love affairs immediately and completely
    • love is treated only as a comic theme in the novel

  11. Which question is most useful when evaluating the novel's use of memory?

    • Is the author's name short enough to fit the spine?
    • Is Amiens a city in Spain or in northern France?
    • Does the book have a red cover with gold lettering?
    • Does the 1978 narrative show memory as recovery of the past or a source of pain?

  12. What does the novel suggest about the physical toll of trench warfare?

    • it leads to a rapid peace within a few weeks
    • it affects only the officers who commanded the front
    • it causes lasting injury, death and psychological damage among the men
    • it causes no lasting harm once the men return home

  13. Which theme is shown through the division between the prewar and wartime sections?

    • the triumph of technology over human effort in the war
    • the gap between the innocence of prewar life and the brutality of war
    • the advantages of colonial rule for the British
    • the equality of all social classes in the trenches

  14. What role does the Somme play in the novel's emotional structure?

    • it is a minor episode with little importance to the story
    • it is where the characters' fates are decided and the threads converge
    • it is a comic interlude between the two love stories
    • it is a place where no soldier is ever killed

  15. What is the effect of the 1978 framing sections on the reader?

    • they reveal that the war was a comedy of errors
    • they replace the war with a fantasy about a lost kingdom
    • they remove any sense of history from the narrative
    • they show how later generations struggle to understand the war through memory

  16. Which literary feature helps to create the novel's sense of intimacy?

    • a close third-person focus on Stephen's thoughts and feelings
    • a dry list of military statistics and casualty figures
    • a glossary of technical terms at the end of the book
    • a narrator who never appears in the text at all

  17. Which statement best describes the tone of the war sections?

    • celebratory and patriotic in its view of the army
    • neutral and indifferent to the suffering of the men
    • grim, detailed and realistic, with little romantic glamour
    • light-hearted and often humorous in its treatment of danger

  18. Which question is most useful when evaluating the novel as a historical text?

    • Is the book's price reasonable for a student's budget?
    • How many chapters does the novel contain in total?
    • How accurately does the novel depict the conditions of the Somme and the tunnellers' work?
    • Who designed the cover of the first edition?

  19. Which phrase best describes the novel's central theme?

    • the way war destroys love, youth and the possibility of a stable future
    • the rules of a card game played by officers at night
    • the growth of a commercial empire across the seas
    • the spread of a new religion in the countryside

  20. Who is Isabelle's husband, a factory owner in Amiens?

    • Azaire, the factory owner and Isabelle's husband
    • Wraysford, Stephen's own surname and family
    • Weir, the tunnelling officer in the war
    • Firebrace, the Welsh tunneller from the mines

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