Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A book that took longer to write than to win readers

The Lord of the Rings appeared in three volumes in 1954 and 1955, though Tolkien had been building Middle-earth for decades before that. He began writing what became the story in the 1930s, and the work grew out of his professional interest in language and old northern European literature. The books only became a mass phenomenon later, especially in the 1960s, when a paperback edition found a huge young readership in the United States.

The many currencies of East Asia

Japan's currency is the yen, whose name simply means "round object", a reference to the shape of the coins. It is easy to confuse with its neighbours: China uses the yuan, and the Korean won shares a similar linguistic root, since all three words descend from the same Chinese character for a round coin. Japan's yen was formally introduced in the nineteenth century as part of the country's modernisation.

Benjamin Franklin and the lending library

Franklin helped found the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731. It was a subscription library, meaning members paid a fee to share books, and it is often described as America's first successful lending library of its kind. Franklin later wrote that this arrangement gave ordinary people access to books they could never have afforded alone, an idea that spread to other cities.

From the screen to the statehouse

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born bodybuilder turned Hollywood star, was elected Governor of California in 2003 and served until 2011. He was not the first actor to enter politics in the United States, but his election was unusual for a newcomer with no prior public office. Ronald Reagan, another California governor, followed a similar path from film to the statehouse before becoming president.

An island with a long memory

Sardinia belongs to Italy, and it sits in the Mediterranean west of the Italian mainland. Its history is a patchwork of outside rulers, including Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Spaniards and Piedmontese, before it joined a unified Italy in the nineteenth century. The island is also home to the nuraghe, ancient stone tower structures built by a culture that left no written records.