24 short questions and answers on arts & culture, based on the official handbook. Read them, then test yourself with the free mock tests.
Henry Purcell, organist at Westminster Abbey in the 1600s. George Frideric Handel, born in Germany, who wrote Water Music and the Messiah.
Gustav Holst (The Planets), Edward Elgar (Pomp and Circumstance Marches), Ralph Vaughan Williams (inspired by English folk music), William Walton, and Benjamin Britten (the opera Peter Grimes).
An eight-week summer season of classical concerts, mainly at the Royal Albert Hall in London, organised by the BBC. The Last Night of the Proms is the most famous concert.
Glastonbury is a famous summer festival. The Mercury Music Prize is for the best album, and the Brit Awards celebrate pop music.
London's West End is called 'Theatreland'. Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap has run since 1952, the longest initial run of any show. Gilbert and Sullivan wrote comic operas; Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Pantomimes are family shows at Christmas. The Laurence Olivier Awards honour theatre.
A huge arts festival every summer in Edinburgh. The Festival Fringe is its biggest part, with thousands of shows.
Thomas Gainsborough (portraits in country settings), John Constable (landscapes such as Dedham Vale), J.M.W. Turner (dramatic landscapes and seascapes), David Hockney (pop art in the 1960s).
An English sculptor famous for large bronze abstract sculptures.
An award for contemporary art, started in 1984 and named after the painter J.M.W. Turner.
Inigo Jones (classical style), Sir Christopher Wren (St Paul's Cathedral), Robert Adam (neoclassical houses), Augustus Pugin (helped design the Houses of Parliament), Sir Edwin Lutyens (the Cenotaph in Whitehall). Modern: Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Zaha Hadid.
Lancelot 'Capability' Brown designed landscaped grounds for country houses. The Chelsea Flower Show is a famous garden show. Many people rent allotments to grow food.
Thomas Hardy (Far from the Madding Crowd), Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited), Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim), Graham Greene and J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter). The Man Booker Prize is a top award for fiction.
John Milton (Paradise Lost), William Wordsworth (his poem about daffodils), Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats, William Blake, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the First World War poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish poet and novelist. Many writers are honoured in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.
Colin Firth, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Dame Judi Dench, Kate Winslet and Tilda Swinton. Emily Watson has been nominated but has not won.
'To be or not to be' (Hamlet), 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet' (Romeo and Juliet), 'All the world's a stage' (As You Like It), 'Once more unto the breach' (Henry V), 'Now is the winter of our discontent' (Richard III).
Victorian novelists from Yorkshire. Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre and Emily wrote Wuthering Heights.
The author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings was voted the country's best-loved novel in 2003.
Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond spy novels. Agatha Christie, by contrast, wrote detective stories and the play The Mousetrap.
A Victorian poet, famous for 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' about a cavalry charge in the Crimean War.
Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Sir David Lean. Britain made the Ealing comedies, the James Bond films and the Harry Potter films. Nick Park made Wallace and Gromit. The BAFTAs are the British film awards.
Satire, stand-up comedy, Punch and Judy puppet shows, and TV comedy such as Monty Python's Flying Circus.
By the TV licence fee, which households watching live TV must pay. The BBC has no advertisements.
England: roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and fish and chips. Wales: Welsh cakes. Scotland: haggis. Northern Ireland: the Ulster fry.
Fashion: Mary Quant, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen. Furniture: Thomas Chippendale in the 18th century. Ceramics: Clarice Cliff, who designed Art Deco pottery. Interiors: Sir Terence Conran in the 20th century.