'The Holy Bible' by the Manic Street Preachers Quiz

Answer: Jenny Saville

The painting is called 'Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face)'. Like many of Saville's works, it features a naked female body. Saville also provided the artwork for 'Journal for Plague Lovers', a piece called 'Stare', which was censored by supermarkets, much to the band's disgust.

Answer: I am a boy, they call me Rita

'I am a boy, they call me Rita' is based around a line from the chorus of 'Yes', which goes 'tie his hair in bunches/[censored] him, call him Rita if you want'. The other choices are the first three lines of 'Faster'.

Answer: 'Mausoleum' and 'The Intense Humming of Evil'

Both 'Mausoleum' and 'The Intense Humming of Evil' are about the Holocaust, and were written after the band visited the former concentration camps of Belsen and Dachau. 'The Intense Humming of Evil' features a sample of a report on the Nuremberg trials, in which many Nazis were tried and found guilty, and the second verse begins with 'Arbeit macht frei'.

This means 'work makes you free', and is the motto found on top of the gates at Auschwitz and Dachau; a photo of the latter is used in the album's artwork.

Answer: The mother of one of Peter Sutcliffe's victims

The sample is as follows: "I wonder who you think you are. You damn well think you're G-d or something? G-d giveth life, G-d taketh it away, not you. I think you are the Devil itself." 'Archives of Pain' is about serial killers, and Peter Sutcliffe, aka the Yorkshire Ripper, is one of the many killers mentioned in the song.

Caraline Neville-Lister is the woman speaking at the beginning of '4st 7lb', while the Kidron documentary, 'Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns' is sampled at the beginning of 'Yes' (though the person talking is a man).

Answer: ...and not leave a footprint

'4st 7lb' is a very graphic and disturbing description of the horrors of anorexia, from the viewpoint of a teenage girl suffering from it. The sample of a woman saying, "I eat too much to die, and not enough to stay alive. I'm sitting in the middle, waiting" is from a documentary entitled 'Caraline's Story' about an anorexic woman, Caraline Neville-Lister, who later died of the disease. Medically speaking, the title is a reference to the weight which is considered the cut-off point before anorexia becomes inevitably fatal.

Answer: Tipper Gore

The lines in question are: 'Cool, groovy, morning fine/Tipper Gore was a friend of mine/I love a free country/The stars and stripes and an apple for Mommy.' Mary Elizabeth 'Tipper' Gore was the wife of Democrat politician Al Gore, and the founder of the Parents' Music Resource Centre, an organisation who introduced the idea of Parental Advisory stickers for music containing violent, drug-related or sexual content.

Answer: Mausoleum

Ballard was talking about his 1973 novel 'Crash' in the interview which was sampled; it attracted controversy for its content, being about people who were sexually aroused by car crashes. 'Crash' was made into a film starring James Spader and Holly Hunter in 1996. The sample appears in the middle eight, before the final verse. Both Edwards and Nicky Wire were fans of Ballard's work.

Answer: Yes

Given the amount of swearing in 'Yes', it probably wouldn't have made a good single! All three singles off 'The Holy Bible' were released in 1994; 'Faster' on 6th June, 'Revol' on 1st August, and 'She Is Suffering' on 3rd October.

Answer: Four weeks

The album only took four weeks to record. It was recorded in Cardiff, at Sound Space Studios. The recording sessions were very intense, and singer James Dean Bradfield blamed the long hours in the studio for the breakdown of his relationship at the time. Edwards did not contribute to the musical side of things; according to Nicky Wire, he would often fall asleep on the sofa while the others recorded the album.

Answer: 6

Despite being one of the band's less commercial albums, 'The Holy Bible' charted at Number Six when it was released on 29th August 1994. Six months later, on 1st February 1995, Richey Edwards went missing. His car was reported as abandoned two weeks later, in a service station near the Severn Bridge.

Although some people claimed to have spotted him afterwards, none of these sightings were conclusive. Edwards was finally declared legally dead in absentia on 23rd November 2008.