Lesson 4.2.1.6

4.2.1.6 Up the Line to Death, ed. Brian Gardner Quiz: AQA English Literature A, Unit 2

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson 4.2.1.6, Up the Line to Death, ed. Brian Gardner: 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. Up the Line to Death is which kind of text?

    • a novel about the life of a single soldier
    • a collection of letters written by generals
    • a history of the Western Front in prose
    • an anthology of First World War poetry

  2. Who edited Up the Line to Death?

    • Brian Gardner
    • Pat Barker
    • Catherine Reilly
    • Joan Littlewood

  3. Which poet is most associated with powerful anti-war poems about the front?

    • Ted Hughes, a poet of animals and the natural world
    • John Betjeman, a poet of the English suburbs
    • Wilfred Owen, who wrote about gas attacks and young soldiers' deaths
    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a Victorian poet laureate

  4. Which poet who served in the war wrote the poem 'Suicide in the Trenches'?

    • Rupert Brooke, who wrote sonnets about England
    • Siegfried Sassoon, who criticised civilian attitudes
    • Edward Thomas, a poet of the English countryside
    • Thomas Hardy, a novelist who wrote poems late in life

  5. Which poetic technique is frequently used by war poets to represent the sensory experience of combat?

    • footnotes and prose commentary on each line
    • a strict use of the villanelle form and its refrains
    • vivid imagery and sensory detail of sound, smell and pain
    • a long narrative written in rhyming couplets throughout

  6. What does the title Up the Line to Death suggest?

    • a route taken by delegates to a peace conference
    • a journey to a seaside holiday resort in the summer
    • a railway timetable for the trains to the coast
    • the journey towards the front line and the death that awaits there

  7. Which statement best describes the anthology's likely view of the war?

    • a glorious adventure that brought honour to the nation
    • a matter that the anthology's poets ignore entirely
    • a comic episode with few serious consequences
    • brutal and wasteful, often critical of its leaders

  8. Why might a student compare the poems with prose accounts of the war?

    • because prose is always more truthful than poetry
    • to see how different forms express the same experience of war
    • because poems cannot describe war at all
    • because poems and prose must be identical in content

  9. Which device do war poets often use to describe the unspeakable?

    • understatement, euphemism or irony
    • long lists of numbers and dates
    • exaggerated comedy and farce
    • mathematical symbols and formulas

  10. Which question is most useful when evaluating a war poem in this anthology?

    • Was the poem read aloud in a school assembly?
    • How do the poem's language and form shape the reader's response to the soldiers' experience?
    • What is the poet's favourite colour in the summer?
    • How many copies of the anthology were printed in total?

  11. Which feature of the anthology helps readers see the range of experiences of the war?

    • only song lyrics without any written text
    • only poems written after the year 1950 in English
    • poems by soldiers, officers and writers from different backgrounds
    • poems by a single author only throughout the book

  12. Which statement describes the role of irony in many war poems?

    • it is used only in love poetry and never in war writing
    • it makes the poems more comic and light-hearted in tone
    • it removes all emotion from the poems entirely
    • it exposes the gap between official rhetoric about glory and the reality of death

  13. What does the phrase 'Dulce et Decorum Est' refer to in Owen's work?

    • a line of verse from a Greek tragedy performed in London
    • a Latin phrase praising death for one's country, which Owen challenges
    • a naval signal used to order a retreat at sea
    • a hymn sung by the soldiers before each battle

  14. Which statement best describes the common subject of war poetry?

    • the experience of ordinary soldiers and the loss of life
    • the careers of diplomats negotiating peace treaties
    • the history of trade routes between the empires
    • the rules of military rank in the officers' mess

  15. Why do many war poems use the first person?

    • to create a light and comic tone for the reader
    • to convey immediacy and personal testimony
    • because the first person is required by military law
    • to hide the identity of the poet from the censors

  16. Which feature is characteristic of poems written in the trenches?

    • abstract reflections on the nature of God and salvation
    • fictional settings in distant countries of the east
    • lengthy descriptions of peacetime leisure activities
    • concrete detail drawn from direct experience of the front

  17. Which statement best supports reading the anthology as a critique of the war?

    • poems celebrate each battle as a great victory for the nation
    • poems avoid any mention of death or injury at all
    • poems praise the commanders for their brilliant decisions
    • poems repeatedly contrast patriotic rhetoric with the reality of death and injury

  18. Which question is most useful for judging the anthology's historical significance?

    • Is the book's cover printed in a bright or a muted colour?
    • Are the poems arranged in strict alphabetical order by title?
    • Does the anthology contain an index at the back of the book?
    • How does the collection reflect the range of responses to the war, from enthusiasm to disillusion?

  19. Which poet wrote 'Anthem for Doomed Youth'?

    • Wilfred Owen
    • Isaac Rosenberg
    • Rupert Brooke
    • Robert Graves

  20. Which poet wrote 'Break of Day in the Trenches'?

    • Wilfred Owen
    • Isaac Rosenberg
    • Edward Thomas
    • Siegfried Sassoon

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