Ancient Egypt to the world wars — rulers, religions, laws and the turning points, credited accurately.
History quizzes usually reward memorising dates. These try to reward understanding the shape of things: why a pyramid was built where it was, what feudalism actually obliged people to do, how a single assassination in Sarajevo escalated into four years of industrial war, and what the Treaty of Versailles settled and left unsettled. The collection runs from Egypt and the classical Mediterranean through the medieval world to the twentieth century, taking in ruling houses, religions and their texts, and the legal principles that quietly outlasted every regime that produced them.
Angles, casing stones, granite hauled from Aswan, and what the workers' village actually revealed.
The Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, which changes angle partway up, was built for which king?
The gods with animal heads, the weighing of the heart, and what the jars beside the coffin were for.
Which god, shown with the head of a jackal, was associated with embalming?
Monuments, rulers and the writing we spent centuries decoding.
The Great Pyramid at Giza was built as a tomb for which pharaoh?
Ten kings and one queen who took the throne, from the first unifier to the last native ruler.
Which king appears on a famous carved palette wearing the crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt?
Beer rations, board games, eye paint and the rubbish heap that told us how ordinary Egyptians lived.
Egyptian writing sheets were made from what?
The conquests, the successor kingdoms and the three centuries of Greek influence that followed.
Alexander the Great inherited the throne of which kingdom?
Ten fights from Thermopylae to the Milvian Bridge, and what each of them settled.
At which pass did a small Greek force hold up the Persian army in 480 BC?
Athenian politics, a long war with Sparta, and the scholars who worked in the same world.
What was the Greek term for an independent city-state?
Ten questions on the offices, alliances and civil wars of Rome before the emperors.
How many consuls normally held office in the Roman Republic at the same time?
Baths, apartment blocks, plumbing and fish sauce — how Romans actually lived day to day.
What were the large Roman public bath complexes called?
City-states, empire and the inheritance still in daily use.
Which Greek city-state was best known for its military discipline?
Walls, wars, philosophy and collapse, told through the men who held the purple.
Which emperor ordered a wall built across northern Britain in the 120s AD?
What forensic techniques can establish, and what they cannot.
Forensic science is best defined as what?
Standards of proof, eyewitness memory, confessions and how wrongful convictions come to light.
In a criminal trial, the burden of proof normally rests with whom?
Traces, impressions, insects and the limits of what physical evidence can actually prove.
Locard's exchange principle states what?
From Sumer to the Inca — eight questions for the serious history lover.
Which river was central to the rise of Ancient Egypt?
Rome to the twentieth century — what actually brought the great empires down.
The Western Roman Empire is conventionally dated as ending in which year?
The upheavals that replaced a system rather than just a ruler.
The storming of the Bastille in 1789 marked the beginning of which revolution?
Codes, charters, conventions and the trials that made individuals answerable for state crimes.
In which year was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted?
What the legal phrases everyone repeats actually commit a court to.
The principle that a defendant is treated as innocent until proven otherwise is called what?
Mens rea, tort, hearsay and the other terms that do the heavy lifting in a courtroom.
In criminal law, what does mens rea refer to?
Ten long poems from Mesopotamia to Mali, and the places and languages that produced them.
The Epic of Gilgamesh was written down in which region?
The pantheons and legends still hiding in everyday language.
In Greek mythology, who is the king of the gods?
Ten Greek stories told through the people who lived them, from Pandora to the priestess at Delphi.
In the most common version, who opened the jar that let troubles loose in the world?
Ten creatures from local storytelling traditions, from a hut on chicken legs to a spider who talks his way out of everything.
In Jewish folklore, what is a golem?
Ten ordinary words and names that turn out to be carrying a god, a Titan or a doomed hero around with them.
The word "panic" comes from which Greek god?
Bound wolves, borrowed eyes and a short-handled hammer: ten questions on the myths written down in medieval Iceland.
Which god lost a hand while the gods were binding the wolf Fenrir?
Coyote, Reynard, the Monkey King and the other figures who win by cunning rather than strength.
Which Norse figure is a trickster, sometimes helping the gods and sometimes working against…
Readings, committees, delegated powers and the machinery that turns a proposal into law.
A bill becomes an act at which point?
The machinery of government, described rather than argued about.
How many states make up the United States of America?
How different ways of counting the same ballots produce very different chambers.
Under first past the post, a seat is won by whom?
Fasts, feasts and pilgrimages, and why some dates move while others stay put.
Eid al-Fitr marks the end of what?
Minarets, arks, stupas and naves — the parts of religious buildings and what they are for.
The tower attached to a mosque, from which the call to prayer is traditionally given, is…
The major world religions, their books and their practices.
The Quran is the central religious text of which faith?
Ruling houses across three continents and how power moved.
Who is the longest-reigning monarch in British history?
Regents, consorts, orbs and the rules that decide who gets the throne next.
Primogeniture is a rule under which the throne passes to whom?
Five monarchs, one break with Rome and 118 years that reshaped England.
The Tudor dynasty began when Henry Tudor won which battle in 1485?
Feudal Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic Golden Age.
Feudalism is best described as a system of what?
Vaults and buttresses, monastic rules, pilgrim roads and the arguments that split the church.
Which feature allowed Gothic cathedrals to carry the outward thrust of the roof away from the…
Mali gold, Song printing, Mongol cavalry and the stone walls of Great Zimbabwe.
Mansa Musa, whose pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1320s became famous, ruled which empire?
How both wars began, turned and were settled.
In which year did the First World War begin?
No man's land, duckboards, gas and the daily conditions of the Western Front.
In trench warfare, what was no man's land?
Ten questions on the alliances, campaigns and decisions that shaped the war of 1914 to 1918.
Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire fought the war as which grouping?
Rationing, evacuation, codebreaking and the inventions the Second World War pushed forward.
Which country house north of London was the centre of Allied codebreaking work?
From the pact of August 1939 to the fall of Berlin, ten turning points in the European war.
Which agreement of August 1939 committed Germany and the Soviet Union to non-aggression days…
Carriers, codebreakers and island campaigns across the largest theatre of the Second World War.
Which June 1942 battle cost Japan four fleet carriers and reversed the balance in the Pacific?
Reparations, ruined currencies, new borders and the institutions built out of the wreckage.
Which body was created after the First World War to prevent future conflicts between states?