Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

How Roman numerals still shape the way we number things

MCM is a neat example of the subtractive principle at work: a smaller numeral placed before a larger one means subtraction, so CM stands for 100 before 1000, or 900, while the leading M adds another 1000. That gives 1900. Roman numerals were the standard system across much of Europe for centuries, and they never fully disappeared - they still turn up on clock faces, in film credits and in the names of monarchs and popes.

Tirana and Harare: capitals with complicated pasts

Tirana became the capital of Albania in the 1920s, when the newly independent state chose a modest town in the centre of the country over older coastal cities. Harare has a more layered story: it was founded in the late nineteenth century as Salisbury, named after a British prime minister, and only took its current name in 1982, two years after Zimbabwe's independence. Both cities show how capitals can be political statements as much as practical choices.

Suzanne Collins and the making of Panem

Suzanne Collins drew on classical myth - the name Katniss echoes the archer Atalanta, and the Hunger Games themselves nod to the Roman practice of gladiatorial combat as public spectacle. Before The Hunger Games, she had written the Underland Chronicles, a fantasy series for younger readers. The dystopian trilogy went on to become one of the defining young adult series of its era.

Frank Herbert and the desert planet that changed science fiction

Frank Herbert's Dune, published in 1965, remains one of the best-selling science fiction novels ever written. Herbert spent years researching desert ecology, and the Fremen of Arrakis are shaped by the same survival pressures he studied in real arid environments. The book's influence is hard to overstate: it helped move science fiction toward epic, politically complex world-building.

The Himalayas and the countries that share them

The Himalayan range is not confined to a single nation. It stretches across India, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Pakistan, and it feeds some of the largest river systems in Asia. India's Himalayan regions include Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim, each with distinct cultures and landscapes. The mountains are also geologically young and still rising, as the Indian plate continues to push into the Eurasian plate.