United Kingdom
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96 free United Kingdom trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The United Kingdom is one country made of four, with three legal systems, two dominant parties, one uncodified constitution and a flag that forgot Wales. It is the place where football, rugby, golf and darts were codified, where the world's oldest broadcaster still runs on a licence fee, and where the Prime Meridian was pinned to a hill in Greenwich. This quiz covers the shape of the place and how it came to be: the Acts of Union of 1707 and 1801, the capitals of the four nations, Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike, the Channel Tunnel, the Crown Dependencies that are not actually in the UK, and the long arc from Roman conquest to empire to Brexit. It also dips into culture — the Beatles, Shakespeare, the NHS, afternoon tea and the M25. Fifty questions from easy to hard, each sourced and each explanation adding one extra detail for the next pub quiz.
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many countries make up the United Kingdom?
Four
Four: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland field separate national football teams, yet at the Olympic Games they compete together as one Great Britain and Northern Ireland team.
Q 02Which country shares the UK's only land border?
Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland: the 310-mile border was drawn in 1921 as a provisional line, but when a commission's plan to adjust it leaked in 1925, the governments shelved the report and left the line as it was.
Q 03In which city did the Harland & Wolff shipyard build the Titanic?
Belfast
Belfast's Harland & Wolff yard launched the hull on 31 May 1911 before about 100,000 onlookers, yet the liner's registered home port was Liverpool, where its owner White Star Line had its offices.
Q 04What is the capital of Wales?
Cardiff
Cardiff was a small town until coal exports made it one of the world's busiest ports; it became a city only in 1905 and was not recognised as the capital of Wales until 1955.
Q 05The 1707 union with England cost Scotland which institution, not restored until 1999?
Its parliament
Its parliament: the Acts of Union merged the Scottish and English parliaments at Westminster while guaranteeing Scots law and the Church of Scotland, and a Scottish Parliament did not meet again until 12 May 1999.
Q 06At which 1066 battle did William of Normandy defeat King Harold to win the English throne?
Hastings
Hastings: Harold's army had destroyed a Norwegian invasion at Stamford Bridge, in the north, only 19 days earlier and had to march the length of England to meet William.
Q 07Which Roman emperor ordered the conquest of Britain in AD 43, nearly a century after Julius Caesar's raids?
Claudius
Claudius left the fighting to his general Aulus Plautius, then crossed in person for the final march on Colchester, stayed just 16 days and was voted a triumph by the Senate.
Q 08Who is generally regarded as Britain's first prime minister, in office from 1721 to 1742?
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole turned down 10 Downing Street as a personal gift from George II and took it only as an official residence, which is why prime ministers still live there.
Q 09Which MP led the campaign that ended the British slave trade?
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce lived just long enough to know the wider goal was won: he died on 29 July 1833, days after hearing that the bill abolishing slavery across the empire was sure to pass.
Q 10At its 1920s peak, the British Empire covered roughly what share of the world's land?
A quarter
A quarter: the empire reached about 13.7 million square miles around 1920, because victory in the First World War handed it former German and Ottoman territories as League of Nations mandates.
Q 11The period of British naval dominance from 1815 to 1914 is known by what Latin name?
Pax Britannica
Pax Britannica, the 'British peace', echoed the Pax Romana: with its sea power unchallenged after 1815, the Royal Navy policed the oceans, and its West Africa Squadron freed about 150,000 people from slave ships.
Q 12Which 1940 air campaign saw the RAF fight off the Luftwaffe and forestall a German invasion?
Battle of Britain
Battle of Britain: Churchill named it before it started, telling the Commons on 18 June 1940 that the Battle of France was over and 'the Battle of Britain is about to begin'.
Q 13Which prime minister's government founded the NHS in 1948?
Clement Attlee
Q 21What is the highest point in the British Isles?
Ben Nevis
Ben Nevis had a weather observatory staffed on its summit from 1883 to 1904; a short stint there in 1894 inspired the physicist Charles Wilson to invent the cloud chamber, which won him a Nobel Prize.
Q 22What is England's highest mountain?
Scafell Pike
Scafell Pike's summit was given to the National Trust in 1919 by Lord Leconfield as a memorial to the men of the Lake District who died in the First World War.
Q 23What is the largest lake in the British Isles by area?
Lough Neagh
Lough Neagh supplies about 40 per cent of Northern Ireland's drinking water, yet its bed is privately owned by the Earl of Shaftesbury.
Clement Attlee's government launched the NHS on 5 July 1948, when health minister Aneurin Bevan was symbolically handed the keys of Park Hospital near Manchester.
Q 14Off which Commonwealth country's coast did Britain test its first atomic bomb in 1952?
Australia
Australia: the bomb was exploded inside the hull of the frigate HMS Plym, anchored off the Montebello Islands, to learn what a weapon smuggled into a port aboard a ship would do.
Q 15Which legal threshold did the UK lower from 21 to 18 in 1969?
Voting age
Voting age: the UK was the first major democracy to give 18-year-olds the vote, and many others followed in the 1970s; the first teenagers to use it voted at the Bridgwater by-election in March 1970.
Q 16Which prime minister announced a resignation the morning after the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016?
David Cameron
David Cameron had called the referendum himself and campaigned to remain; when Leave won with 51.9 per cent he announced outside Downing Street that he would go.
Q 17Which first minister of Scotland resigned after voters rejected independence in the 2014 referendum?
Alex Salmond
Alex Salmond announced he would go the day after Scots voted 55.3 per cent to 44.7 to stay in the UK, and his deputy Nicola Sturgeon succeeded him unopposed.
Q 18Which 1998 accord is usually taken to mark the end of the Troubles?
Good Friday Agreement
Good Friday Agreement: signed on 10 April 1998, it was put to voters on both sides of the Irish border six weeks later, and 71 per cent backed it in Northern Ireland.
Q 19Which country invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, starting a 10-week war?
Argentina
Argentina's military junta invaded hoping to rally support at home, but defeat after 74 days toppled its leader, General Galtieri, within days, and elections followed in 1983.
Q 20Which three island polities are Crown Dependencies rather than part of the UK?
Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey
Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey answer to the Crown, not the UK, which handles only their defence and foreign affairs; the Channel Islands are the last of the medieval Duchy of Normandy still held by the monarch.
Q 24Which French port, the nearest to England, lies about 21 miles across the Strait of Dover?
Calais
Calais was English for more than two centuries: Edward III captured it in 1347, and it stayed under English rule until France retook it in 1558.
Q 25Which train runs directly from London to Paris through the Channel Tunnel?
Eurostar
Eurostar first ran in 1994 into London's Waterloo, prompting a French politician to ask for the station to be renamed because it recalled Napoleon's defeat; trains moved to St Pancras in 2007.
Q 26Which London site was chosen in 1884 as the defining point of the Prime Meridian?
Royal Greenwich Observatory
Royal Greenwich Observatory won the 1884 vote in Washington by 22 to 1 because most sea charts already used its meridian; France abstained and held out against Greenwich time until 1911.
Q 27Which island group is the northernmost part of the UK?
Shetland
Shetland and Orkney were pledged to Scotland by Christian I of Denmark and Norway as security for his daughter's dowry when she married James III; the money was never paid, so the islands stayed Scottish.
Q 28Which voting system elects the House of Commons?
First-past-the-post
First-past-the-post survived a 2011 referendum in which 67.9 per cent of voters rejected a switch to the alternative vote; each constituency elects the one candidate with the most votes.
Q 29The UK's constitution is unusual among major states in being what?
Uncodified
Uncodified: there is no single founding document, so Parliament can change constitutional rules by passing an ordinary Act; Israel and New Zealand are among the few other states without one codified text.
Q 30Scottish juries long had which third verdict?
Not proven
Not proven was an acquittal with the same legal effect as not guilty; Sir Walter Scott called it 'that bastard verdict' in his journal, and lawmakers voted to scrap it in 2025.