The AnswerBank Articles

Birmingham European Capital of Culture

Insert your own typical 'Scouser' joke hereNot yet, not yet... but maybe one day soon. Twelve cities in the United Kingdom are vying to be European Capital of Culture in 2008 - and yes, Brum is one.00:00 Thu 05th Sep 2002

Psst want to buy some dirty pictures

Q: In the movie Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec had a small role. Just how involved was he in the seedier side of Parisian nightlife A: For a mere 575,000 you can find out. A complete set of his00:00 Mon 29th Apr 2002

The Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is the oldest public museum in Britain, and one of the oldest in the world. What does it contain, where is it, and why to visit... The Ashmolean collection was00:00 Fri 01st Mar 2002

Is Oscar off the radar

"Divan" asked what is Oscar Wilde's best work - and there were very few volunteers prepared to debate the issue. Can it be that the brilliance of one of the most amusing, prolific and controversial00:00 Mon 29th Apr 2002

Portcullis House

Q. What is it A. In the early 1990s it was realised that MPs' workspaces within the Palace of Westminster were less than adequate, with many being housed in Portakabins and other temporary quarters00:00 Tue 23rd Apr 2002

Nursery Rhymes

Q. What are they all about, then A. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable defines them as: 'The traditional metrical jingles learnt by children "in the nursery" and frequently used in their games.'00:00 Sun 21st Apr 2002

John Stow and the Survey of London

Q. Who was he A. John Stow was a 16th-century London tailor, who, among other things, was one of the first writers in England to use what we would consider proper documentary evidence to produce00:00 Sun 21st Apr 2002

H. Rider Haggard

Q. Wasn't Haggard a bit of a poor-man's Rudyard Kipling A. That has been said, though it is a little unfair. Haggard and Kipling were friends, and both wrote extensively and in a mythologising00:00 Sat 20th Apr 2002

Concepts from fiction

Q. What concepts A. Those ideas and characters that originated in literature but which have passed into the language and become part of our everyday gallery of concepts. Q. How about a few00:00 Sun 14th Apr 2002

Body art: Tattoos

Q. So, art or disfigurement A. As usual with these things it is a matter of opinion. Tattoos range from self-inflicted crosses and 'evil' across the knuckles to the most extraordinarily elaborate -00:00 Fri 12th Apr 2002

The Goons

Q. Why are we still on about a radio show that finished over 40 years ago A. Because, directly or indirectly, almost all the most cutting-edge British comedy of the last 40 years, that which has00:00 Fri 12th Apr 2002

Robin Cook

Q. Why 'I was Robin Cook' A. Just a little pun on one of Cook's better-known titles under his pen name of Derek Raymond, I Was Dora Suarez (which was put to music in the early 1990s by the band00:00 Fri 05th Apr 2002

The Venerable Bede

Q. Hang on. Mackem A. Someone from Sunderland or its environs. Said to come from the saying 'We mackem; you tackem', it refers to the days when the city had some of the most important shipyards in00:00 Fri 05th Apr 2002

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'

One of the greatest poems written in English, 'Kubla Khan' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is loved by many, loathed by some but acknowledged as a classic by almost all. Q. So, what's all this about00:00 Fri 05th Apr 2002

Clarice Cliff, chinaware artist

Whenever set designers are required to evoke a feel of the 1930s they will almost certainly include some brightly coloured, geometrically-shaped, china. In the English-speaking world, this will00:00 Fri 29th Mar 2002

Sven Hassel: True or false

Q. Well A. That's a tough one. It really depends on which of the two versions of his life - both of which stretch credibility - you believe. Version one - that most appropriate to the books -00:00 Fri 29th Mar 2002

Shock horror: Sensation Fiction

Q. What, horror, sex, crime, violence and the like A. Exactly that, but we're not talking Stephen King or Jake Arnott here. Sensation Fiction or Sensation Novels were a genre rooted firmly in the00:00 Fri 29th Mar 2002

London Underground: A Platform for Art

Q. Surely not A. Surely yes. In 1999 London Underground introduced its - wittily titled - Platform for Art programme, a public-art initiative which seeks to provide a welcoming, interesting and00:00 Sun 24th Mar 2002

Library Classification Systems

Q. Sounds gripping. Just how do librarians keep those books in order A. Of course it's gripping. To try to categorise the sum of all human knowledge is, to say the least, a daunting - and00:00 Sun 24th Mar 2002

The world's first photograph

Q. So, how old is it A. 177 years old. The image of a boy leading a horse was made in 1825 was auctioned by Sotheby's in Paris on 21 March 2002 and had been expected to make in the region of00:00 Fri 22nd Mar 2002