99 questions
Each test holds the same questions every time, so you can take them in any order.
This theme is the map of the UK and the things that stand on it. Which countries make up the country, what to call them, where the cities are, and which landmarks the handbook expects you to know. Its questions are drawn from four different chapters, so practising them together is the only place they sit side by side.
The largest single block is the opening chapter on what the UK actually is. The four countries, the difference between the United Kingdom and Great Britain, the Crown dependencies, and the British overseas territories.
Then come the places. The national parks, the Lake District, Snowdonia, Loch Lomond, the Giant's Causeway, Stonehenge, Skara Brae on Orkney, Maiden Castle, Hadrian's Wall, the Tower of London, the London Eye, and the clock tower at Parliament. Then the symbols, which here means the Union Flag and what it is made of.
The rest is the UK as a set of names and numbers. The capital cities, the major cities of each nation, the currency and its banknotes, where the country sits on the map of Europe, and the population at several points in its history.
Most are plain recall of a name or a place. Which English county holds Stonehenge, which city is the capital of Wales, which coast the Giant's Causeway is on.
A second group asks for an exact figure, and those are the ones worth a second look while you revise. The number of national parks in England, Wales and Scotland, the distance from John O'Groats to Land's End, the number of local authorities in London, the share of the population living in England, and the population in 1600, in 1851 and in 2010.
A third group is about words rather than places. The handbook is careful about the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and Britain, and it asks you to be careful too.
United Kingdom, Great Britain, Britain. Great Britain names England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom is those three and Northern Ireland, which is why the full official name says more than Great Britain on its own. The handbook then uses Britain, British and British Isles loosely, to mean everyone living in the UK. English is the one word it never uses that way, because it points at a single country.
Ireland. Only Northern Ireland is part of the UK. The rest of the island is a separate country that governs itself. A treaty brought peace in 1921, the island was split the following year, and the part that left took the name Irish Free State before becoming a republic in 1949.
Close by and far away, outside either way. The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are the Crown dependencies, each with its own government. St Helena and the Falkland Islands are British overseas territories, scattered well away from the UK. Very different distances, identical standing. Each is linked to the UK while remaining outside it.
The Union Flag. Three crosses, associated with England, Scotland and Ireland. No Welsh dragon, because Wales had already been joined to England by the time the flag was designed and so received no separate emblem. The first version dates from 1606 and combined the English and Scottish flags. Union Jack is the everyday name for the same thing.
Capitals, and cities that are not capitals. The four capitals are London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. The other city questions hand you a name and ask which nation it belongs to, so a few are worth fixing in your head. Dundee, Glasgow and Aberdeen are Scottish. Swansea and Newport are Welsh. Newcastle Upon Tyne, Bradford, Plymouth and Norwich are English. Belfast does both jobs, since it is the capital of Northern Ireland and the Northern Irish city on the handbook's list.
Three superlatives, three answers. The Lake District is England's largest national park. Loch Lomond covers more ground than any other stretch of fresh water on mainland Britain. Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales, stands in Snowdonia. And Big Ben, strictly speaking, is the huge bell inside the clock at Parliament rather than the clock or the tower, which was renamed the Elizabeth Tower in 2012, the year of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee.
Three names the world has changed since the book was printed. Edinburgh Castle is looked after by the body the handbook calls Historic Scotland, which became Historic Environment Scotland in 2015. Snowdonia is now officially Eryri and Snowdon is Yr Wyddfa, the Welsh names adopted in November 2022. The Welsh Assembly is now the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, renamed in 2020 though still in the same city. Some of the population and survey figures in the book come from older counts and have moved since. The test still marks the handbook's answer correct, so answer the book. When a question like these comes up in practice, a Worth knowing note appears beside the answer with the current fact, so you learn both.
Pick this one if the opening chapter is where your practice score drops, or if the four countries and the words for them still feel slippery. Hardly any of its questions turn up in another theme, so nothing else on the site covers this ground and the time is not repeated elsewhere. If you would rather work a whole chapter, the short one is chapter 2 and the landmarks and modern figures sit in chapter 4.