Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The smallest bones, built for sound

The three smallest bones in the human body - the malleus, incus and stapes - sit in the middle ear, and their job is purely mechanical. They form a chain that carries vibrations from the eardrum inward to the inner ear. The stapes is the smallest of all, light enough that it is often described as the size of a grain of rice. Despite their tiny scale, these bones are essential to normal hearing.

Verona, a city written into literature

Verona, in northern Italy, is inseparable from Romeo and Juliet, the Shakespeare tragedy set among its feuding families. The city has leaned into that association: visitors can see a house marketed as Juliet's balcony and a statue of the heroine. Whether or not the story has any real local origin, Verona has turned a work of fiction into part of its identity.

Einstein and the theory of relativity

Albert Einstein is the name most associated with relativity, and the theory comes in two parts. Special relativity, published in 1905, deals with objects moving at constant speed and led to the famous equation E = mc². General relativity, completed in 1915, reframed gravity as the bending of space and time by mass and energy.

Fitzgerald's troubled masterpiece

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Tender Is the Night, published in 1934, after the success of The Great Gatsby. The novel follows a psychiatrist and his wealthy wife across the French Riviera, drawing closely on the author's own marriage to Zelda Fitzgerald. It was not a major success in his lifetime, but later critics came to regard it as one of his finest works.