Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A capital built to be a capital

Addis Ababa sits high in the Ethiopian highlands, at an elevation of roughly 2,350 metres, which makes it one of the highest capital cities in the world. Its name means "new flower" in Amharic. The city is also home to the headquarters of the African Union, giving it a diplomatic weight that goes well beyond Ethiopia's borders.

The composer who made fairy tales dance

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote The Sleeping Beauty in the late 1880s, and it became one of the great classical ballets. What makes the score remarkable is its range: alongside the familiar storybook melodies, Tchaikovsky wove in passages that feel almost symphonic, giving the orchestra far more to do than simple accompaniment. The ballet's premiere took place in St Petersburg in 1890.

A novel that refused to look away

Zora Neale Hurston published Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937, at a time when many critics expected Black writers to focus on social protest. Hurston instead wrote about a woman's inner life, her marriages and her search for independence, told in a rich, dialect-heavy voice. The book was largely overlooked for decades before later writers and scholars championed it as a central work of American literature.

Two very different kinds of capital

Nigeria's capital moved from Lagos to Abuja in 1991. Abuja was purpose-built in the centre of the country, partly to ease the coastal congestion of Lagos and partly to create a neutral ground among Nigeria's many regions and peoples. Gabon's capital, Libreville, has a very different origin: its name means "free town" in French, a reference to freed slaves who settled there in the mid-19th century.

A famous last canvas

Vincent van Gogh painted Wheatfield with Crows in 1890, during the final weeks of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris. The painting's wide, restless field and dark, rising birds have long invited symbolic readings, though van Gogh himself never described it that way. It is often called one of his most emotionally charged landscapes, and its dramatic composition has kept it in the public imagination ever since.