BBC Radio 4 Brain of Britain Ultimate Quiz Book. Russell Davies

Street’, an affectionate term for the Bank of England, was coined in a caption to a cartoon of 1797 by which satirical artist and illustrator?

      30. In the 1930s Mahatma Gandhi led a symbolic protest march against the government’s tax on which commodity?

      31. Following the death of its composer, which unfinished opera was completed in 1926 by Franco Alfano?

      32. Which technological innovation, invented in 1876, was described by Ambrose Bierce as ‘an invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance’?

      33. In a phrase coined by the 18th century poet Edward Young, what do you do if you ‘join the great majority’?

      34. In September 2008, the US government announced it was taking control of two huge mortgage companies in order to help shore up the economy: one was called Fannie Mae, what was the other called?

      35. In 1911, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire was questioned as a suspect by French authorities investigating which major crime?

      36. Garrulus glandarius is the Latin name of which common member of the crow family?

      37. What is the title of Damien Hirst’s controversial artwork featuring a lamb in formaldehyde, first seen in public in 1994?

      38. Which small type of French cake was supposedly named by Louis XV in honour of his father-in-law’s cook?

      39. In a cultural initiative of the Austrian Presidency of the EU in 2006, typical cakes or sweetmeats from all [then] 27 of the member countries were presented in cafés. Belgium contributed waffles, Cyprus baklava and Italy tiramisu. What was chosen to represent the UK?

      40. Which five-letter word, now familiar in a quite different context, is used in archaeology for ‘a monumental gateway to Egyptian temples or palaces, built in stone and usually decorated with relief figures and hieroglyphs’?

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Quiz 15

      1. What name is given to the zone, or those parts of the Earth and its atmosphere, able to support life?

      2. The architect Frank Matcham specialised in the design of what sort of building?

      3. Which two Greek words, meaning ‘the image of a King’, formed the title of the collection of writings supposedly composed by the incarcerated Charles I, and published on the day of his burial in 1649?

      4. Which British racing driver was killed in a road accident off the racing track, just months after winning the world driver’s championship in 1958?

      5. Which branch of mathematics takes its name from the Latin word for a pebble?

      6. How many gallons of beer are there in a firkin?

      7. The koala bear is not a bear. To which family of animals does it belong?

      8. Discovered in 1787 by William Herschel, what’s the largest moon of Uranus?

      9. The mythological lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, whose story is performed by the mechanicals in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, belonged to which ancient civilisation?

      10. In which borough of New York will you find the city’s Botanical Gardens, and the Poe Cottage, the last home of the writer Edgar Allan Poe before his mysterious death in 1849?

      11. In Poe’s story ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, what is the not-very-fortunate fate of the character Fortunato?

      12. What was the title of the film western, directed by John Huston and released in 1961, that featured Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, both in the final roles of their careers?

      13. Violet Gibson was known for her attempt to assassinate which prominent figure in 1926?

      14. In an allusion to his ancestor Edward the Confessor, which of the eight later King Edwards was nicknamed ‘Edward the Caresser’?

      15. Describing whose funeral, in New York in 1974, did Alastair Cooke write: ‘When the ten thousand people inside were asked to stand and pray, there was a vast rustling sound as awesome, it struck me, as that of the several million bats whooshing out of the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico at the first blush of dawn’?

      16. In which German city will you find a statue by Gerhard Marcks which shows ‘a cock standing on a cat standing on a dog standing on a donkey’?

      17. What was the name of the Russian coalminer lauded by the Communist regime, whose name became a byword for prodigious (and highly improbable) feats of productivity?

      18. Sunflower, Surf’s Up and Holland were consecutive LP releases, in the early 1970s, by which multi-million-selling pop group?

      19. Which is the only one of the chemical elements known as the halogens that is liquid at normal room temperatures?

      20. The opening line of every episode of which US television police series, which originally ran from 1951–59, was: ’Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent’?

      21. Harry Longabaugh was the real name of which figure from the Wild West?

      22. The coccyx, the bony lower end of the spinal column, takes its name from an ancient Greek word for which bird?

      23. Who was the first British Prime Minister to appear in a live television broadcast?

      24. The three spires of which English cathedral are nicknamed the ‘Ladies of the Vale’?

      25. A ‘Decembrist’ was a name given to a member of a revolutionary group called the ‘Northern Society’, opposed to the accession of which Russian Tsar in 1825?

      26. The music of the 1883 opera Lakmé, containing the ‘Flower Duet’ which often appears among the most popular classical pieces in surveys, was composed by whom?

      27. Although she’s universally known as Anne Frank, the name ‘Anne’ is actually a pet-name or abbreviation of the diarist’s actual first name, which was – what?

      28. In cell biology, what name is usually given to the jelly-like matter within the cell, but outside the nucleus, which contains the organelles of the cell and in which protein synthesis takes place?

      29. Often changing his name to reflect the development of his various styles, which Japanese artist, born in 1760, is best known for the woodblock print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa?

      30. When Margaret Thatcher won the leadership of the Conservative Party in February 1975, she stood against four male candidates and won almost twice as many votes as her nearest rival in the ballot, 146 to his 79. Who was that runner-up?

      31. Which old Spanish coin was initially worth two pistoles?

      32.