Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A novella that helped win a Nobel

Ernest Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, and it became one of his most celebrated works. The story follows Santiago, an ageing Cuban fisherman locked in a long struggle with a giant marlin far out at sea. Its plain, rhythmic prose was a late-career triumph for Hemingway, and it played a part in the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to him in 1954.

The letter that had to be borrowed

Fluorine takes the symbol F, one of the simplest entries on the periodic table. It belongs to the halogen group, alongside chlorine and iodine, and is the most reactive of all the elements. Its name comes from the Latin fluere, meaning "to flow", a nod to the mineral fluorite, which was once used as a flux in metalworking.

A first line that still makes readers smile

Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, and its opening sentence about a single man in possession of a good fortune remains one of the most quoted lines in English fiction. The novel follows Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy through misunderstandings and social pressure. Austen's sharp wit and close observation of courtship and class have kept the book in print and on screen for more than two centuries.

A lagoon big enough to see from space

The Lagoon of New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, is the world's largest lagoon, wrapped around the main island of the French territory of New Caledonia. It was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2008 in recognition of its coral reefs and exceptional marine life. The Venetian Lagoon, by contrast, is a fraction of the size but far more famous, thanks to the city built on its islands.

Mountains that frame a whole region

The Atlas Mountains stretch across North Africa, running through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. They separate the Mediterranean coast from the Sahara and rise to over 4,000 metres at their highest peaks. For the peoples of the region, from Berber communities to modern city dwellers, the range shapes climate, travel and daily life.