Only in Albania! Trivia Quiz

Answer: He was offered the Albanian throne

Mackay (1852-1932), who had had a distinguished career as a colonial administrator in India, received a letter from the Albanian authorities in 1921, offering him the throne. It suggested he might want to visit Albania the next time he was travelling through the Adriatic to let them know whether he would be interested. He declined, saying that although he was very honoured to have been offered the throne, it was not really in his line of work ...

"Alba" is the Gaelic name for Scotland, but is not how Albania got its name (it may come from the name of a local tribe, or from a word meaning "mountainous") and the name long predates Mackay. The Albanian railway network was mostly developed by the Communist authorities after WWII. Another distinguished British official, Sir Fitzroy Maclean, was sent into neighbouring Yugoslavia to help Tito's resistance forces there in WWII, but the Albanians had no similar assistance.

Answer: Coming out of the opera in Vienna

King Zog had just been to see the opera "Pagliacci." He returned fire and the would-be assassins fled. The incident was re-enacted for one of the ten short films that made up the cult 1987 opera-themed film "Aria." Curiously, Zog was played by a woman, the American actress Theresa Russell.

The other answers are the locations of successful assassination attempts; King Alexandar of Yugoslavia in Marseilles in 1934, Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881.

Answer: He became Albanian leader Enver Hoxha's body double

According to Jones' book, Shapallo was almost a perfect likeness for Albania's post-war Communist leader Enver Hoxha. When the Albanian authorities realised this, he was forcibly whisked away from his village and spent the next 20 years standing in for Hoxha at public events. His entire family were killed. Shapallo vanished after the fall of Communism.

Although Jones described in great detail how he tracked Shapallo down and met him, it later became clear that, although a person matching Shapallo's life story was widely believed to have existed, Jones never found him and these sections of the book were fiction. It remains, however, a concise and very approachable introduction to modern Albanian history and life and expands on many of the themes in this quiz. Fact is often stranger than fiction, especially in Albania, but fiction can illuminate fact.

Sadly, no Albanians have made it into space yet (although US astronaut William Gregory is of Albanian descent). Although a Turkish director made a particularly infamous film, "The Man Who Saved the World," that reused verbatim numerous scenes from "Star Wars," the Albanians have not yet followed suit.

Answer: With Pitchfork and Rifle

"With Pitchfork and Rifle" was a popular Albanian revolutionary march of the time, the pitchfork and rifle symbol being widely used by the ruling Albanian Party of Labour. Enver Hoxha would probably be aghast to know that it is now apparently available as a mobile ringtone for Cold War kitsch fans like me.

Radio Tirana broadcasts always closed with the "Internationale", but it was never used as an interval signal. "The East Is Red" was a Chinese Communist anthem. (I treasure greatly the bright red flexidisc recording of it I won in a Radio Peking competition in 1979).

This quiz would not exist if I had not spent chunks of my mis-spent youth listening to Radio Tirana. Its endless lists of tractor production statistics and programmes with titles such as "Marxism-Leninism: An Ever Correct and Scientific Doctrine" could be strangely addictive. They were also a major influence on, among others, UK alternative poet and songwriter Attila the Stockbroker, leading him to write works such as "Holiday in Albania," "Albanian Football" and his own Radio Tirana parody, "A Very Silly East European Propaganda Station." I've been a big fan of his ever since I discovered our shared "interest" in the mid-80s. On the other side of the world in New Zealand, meanwhile, "Biografi" author Lloyd Jones lived next door to an avid Radio Tirana monitor as a child, the main reason that inspired him to visit the country.

Answer: Norman Wisdom

Unlike virtually all Western films, Wisdom's 1950s "Norman Pitkin" comedies, showing a put-upon manual worker winning through against his inept bosses, were deemed "politically correct" by the Albanian Party of Labour and became extremely popular in local cinemas, being shown there over and over again for decades. There was widespread UK media coverage of Wisdom's first visits to Albania after the fall of Communism. Reporters noted that he was initially astounded to find how incredibly popular he was with people from the President downwards.

Curiously, both Wisdom and Atilla the Stockbroker are devoted fans of Brighton and Hove Albion football club - Wisdom was a director of the club in the 1960s and Atilla has been its Poet In Residence. Who knows - there may be an academic thesis waiting to be written somewhere on the hidden meaning behind the links between a small football club beside the English Channel and a small country on the Adriatic!

Answer: Atheism

Religious believers were persecuted and oppressed in most of the former Communist bloc but most of the other countries allowed some kind of servile low-profile apolitical and non-proselytising religious communities to continue. Only Albania declared itself to be the world's first formally atheist state.

Virtually all the country's mosques and churches were either demolished or put to other uses such as cinemas, sports halls or restaurants. Since the fall of Communism in 1991 many mosques and churches have been rebuilt or reopened, as has happened in many post-Communist countries thanks to extensive foreign funding, and religious life is returning, although reliable unbiased statistics on the lasting impact of Hoxha's policies are hard to come by.

Answer: The Yugoslav running dogs and plotters

A Radio Tirana standard, that one. There were many other variants on the theme: for example, Enver Hoxha's hefty 1978 book "Imperialism and the Revolution" talks, right near the top of Page 1, about "American imperialism and its agencies, Soviet social-imperialism, Chinese social-imperialism, the big bourgeoisie and reaction." (It's the Yugoslavs that are the "revisionists" this time, further down the page). You get the general idea.

In approximate order, Hoxha fell out with most of the West just after WWII, the Yugoslavs in 1948 (for falling out with Stalin), the Soviet Union in the late 1950s (for becoming too pro-Yugoslav, and betraying Stalin's 'ideals'), and his last main ally, China, in the early 1970s.

Answer: Pyramids

Kadare's story covered the building of a giant pyramid in Egypt at great human and financial cost by the pharaoh Cheops. The pyramid soon become more than just a tomb - it was a symbol of the entire Egyptian government and a means of control.

The Enver Hoxha Museum was opened after Hoxha's death in a large gleaming pyramid shaped building in central Tirana. As with all good personality cults, it was stuffed to the rafters with Hoxha's personal effects and had a large statue of the man himself in the centre of it. It later became a cultural centre.

The emergence of an Albanian private sector in the 1990s and the influx of earnings from Albanians working abroad led to an explosion of pyramid investment schemes in 1996-97 that promised impossible returns for investors' savings. Millions invested their life savings in these and when they collapsed, as pyramid schemes always do, there was very serious social unrest.

Answer: An elephant he had bought from Harrods

The elephant - a real, live one - was called Gertie, and was a gift from Leka in 1967 when Reagan was Governor of California, where King Zog spent much of his exile. Many sources say that Nancy Reagan did not, apparently think much of the name and had the beast rechristened GOP after the alternative name for the Republican Party (symbol: an elephant). Gertie/GOP ended up in Sacramento Zoo.

Leka left Albania as a baby at the outbreak of WWII and spent his life in exile, much of it in South Africa, until he returned home a few years after the fall of Communism. He was involved in local politics for a while, but, getting on in years and not in the best of health, has now largely retired from public life.

Answer: Greece refused to play Albania because the two countries were still technically at war

Relations between Greece and Albania were poor for much of the 20th century. Greece had never formally made peace with Albania after Italian-occupied Albania had declared war on Greece in 1940. It was also dissatisfied with the messy outcome of the First Balkan War in 1912-13, which had left a large Greek minority inside the newly created Albanian state. Football-mad Greece preferred to withdraw from the Championships rather than play Albania. The state of war issue was finally settled in 1987 and the countries now get on tolerably well and certainly play each other at football.

Albania were given a bye into the second round of the Championships, where they lost 4-1 on aggregate to Denmark (who went on to finish fourth) but at least had the satisfaction of beating the Danes 1-0 in the second leg in front of a capacity crowd in Tirana, with the winning goal scored by Albanian football legend Panajot Pano.