Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The man who gave the web away

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web while working at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, in 1989. He went on to write the first web browser and server, and he made the underlying technology available royalty-free rather than patenting it. That decision helped the web spread far beyond the research community that first used it. He now leads the World Wide Web Consortium, the body that develops standards for the web.

Mud volcanoes and the Caspian coast

Azerbaijan has the largest concentration of mud volcanoes in the world, with hundreds of them scattered across the Absheron Peninsula and the Caspian shoreline. Unlike magma-driven volcanoes, mud volcanoes erupt cold slurry of mud, water and gas, often methane. Some of their mounds are large enough to be mistaken for ordinary hills, and a few have been known to ignite, producing tall flames. The phenomenon has made the country a destination for geologists.

Venice and the art of building on water

Venice's nickname, the City of Bridges, comes from the sheer number of crossings linking its islands. The Grand Canal alone is spanned by four bridges, including the Rialto, and smaller canals are crossed by hundreds more. Because the city sits on wooden piles driven into the lagoon floor, its engineers have spent centuries solving problems of foundation, tide and weight. The result is a pedestrian network where bridges are not decoration but basic infrastructure.

Oscar Wilde's Faustian portrait

The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1890, tells of a young man whose portrait ages while he stays youthful. Wilde revised the novel after critics condemned its moral tone, and the expanded 1891 version is the one most readers encounter today. The book became a byword for the idea of a hidden self, and its central image has been borrowed by countless later writers and filmmakers. It remains Wilde's only novel.

Dan Brown before the Da Vinci Code

Deception Point, published in 2001, was Dan Brown's third novel and his first to reach the bestseller lists, though it was overshadowed two years later by The Da Vinci Code. The plot revolves around a scientific discovery in the Arctic and a political conspiracy in Washington. Readers who know Brown only for his Robert Langdon thrillers often find his earlier stand-alone novels a different kind of puzzle.