Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A director who turned fear into an art form

Alfred Hitchcock built his reputation on suspense rather than shock, and Psycho is often cited as the film that changed what audiences expected from a thriller. Its most famous scene, the shower murder, is remembered as much for its editing and Bernard Herrmann's shrieking strings as for anything shown on screen. Hitchcock had already directed British classics such as The 39 Steps before moving to Hollywood, where he made Rear Window and Vertigo.

Tempura's long journey to Japan

Tempura is a Japanese dish of battered and fried seafood and vegetables, and its name is usually traced to the Portuguese word "tempero". Portuguese missionaries and traders active in Japan in the sixteenth century introduced a style of frying food in batter, which Japanese cooks gradually refined into the light, crisp version known today. The technique became its own tradition, with sesame oil and precise timing valued over heavy seasoning.

Stravinsky's explosive debut

Igor Stravinsky composed The Firebird for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and its premiere in Paris in 1910 made the young composer famous almost overnight. He followed it with Petrushka and then The Rite of Spring, whose 1913 premiere caused one of the most famous scandals in music history. Stravinsky later lived in France and the United States, and his style shifted repeatedly across a long career.

Two capitals on opposite banks

Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, faces Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo, across the Congo River. They are the only two national capitals in the world that sit directly opposite each other on the same river. The Congo is also the deepest river in the world, which is why the two cities are not linked by a bridge.

The planet that never strays far from the sun

Venus is called the Morning Star when it appears in the eastern sky before sunrise, and the Evening Star when it shines in the west after sunset. Because its orbit lies closer to the sun than Earth's, it is never visible in the middle of the night. It is also the brightest natural object in our sky after the sun and the moon.