“... think of is Slocum’s description of the rebuilding of the Spray. All this American detail was unknown to the Europeans, who saw the beauty of simple forms, but had little sense of the constructional finesse of the best industrial building: their photographs were too small and blurred to show, for example, the chamfered arrises which prevented spalling on ...”

“... are now known to be accompaniments of AIDS, passengers of the underlying disease driven by some unknown agent. The syndrome was recognised in 1981. Since then it has afflicted several thousand people. The first signs are hard to distinguish from many less serious viral infections; there is no quick way of reassuring a patient who suspects he may have the ...”

“... time considered going into the theatre in that capacity and it was at his suggestion that three unknown designers were brought in to do the costumes. These were Elizabeth Montgomery and her two partners Margaret and Sophia Harris, the Motleys, who specialised in producing stunning effects with the cheapest materials. The OUDS Romeo and Juliet entranced all ...”

“... biographer of T.S. Eliot, who was himself to speak of the ‘dark’ experience, of the ‘rude unknown psychic material’, incorporated in his poem The Waste Land, can be seen to contribute to the tradition of romantic fabulation which began with the Gothic novel – a tradition in which darkness is privileged, in which a paranoid distrust is evident, in ...”

“... religious, somewhat morbid. The Stanleys were high-spirited, free-thinking extroverts. Shyness was unknown among them,’ and goes on to quote Russell’s reflections on his genetic heritage: My brother, who had the Stanley temperament, loved the Stanleys and hated the Russells. I loved the Russells and feared the Stanleys. As I have grown older, however, my ...”

“... Charles Vickery (who has always been known about as a birth-control campaigner) and the hitherto unknown George Vickery. The couple eventually let it be understood that they were married by starting to cohabit in 1895, but at any stage the truth could have been a deadly weapon for enemies of Alice Vickery the pioneer of women’s medical training, or of ...”

“... compass Celan: all he is doing is standing in very little light, and waiting to catch something of unknown dimensions. I’m not sure how important Celan is to poetry in English. I think the American ‘deep image’ school, writing poems with a small vocabulary, may think they are doing something comparable. But I don’t understand how people with a ...”

“... Lowland women in love with Highlanders; both are believed to be dead, in fact alive and, unknown to everyone, pregnant with the nation’s future. As Gatty lies stretched on her bed, her husband puts his hand on her breast in the desperate hope that she is still breathing; as Sally lies stretched on the ground, Davey Duff fumbles at her breast in ...”

“... hone the effects of a joke. How many writers, however lonely and bored, would bother to ask some unknown American admirer to stay in their house for the weekend, simply in order to tease them? But this is what Waugh heroically did to Mr Paul Moor. After Moor had been ushered over the threshold by Waugh’s butler (the date is 1949, when outside the pages of ...”

“... Wilt ‘the Stilt’ Chamberlain, the former American basketball player, has three distinct claims to fame. First, there is the basketball, of which modest art he was, as his nickname suggests, a preternaturally gifted exponent. Then there is his much repeated claim to have slept with over ten thousand women during the course of his playing career, a boast which has generated fascination, disapproval and scepticism in equal measure, and transformed him, if such a thing is possible, into the Georges Simenon of the American locker-room, the object of a whole new kind of attention ...”

“... flip and ruminative. There might have been more quotation from the novels, which are still unknown to most readers, and fewer from the many poems which, while often of biographical interest, contribute little to the appreciation of Butts’s oeuvre or to the body of modern poetry. Within a decade Armed with Madness will assume its rightful place within ...”

“... and powerful section editors have at times exercised considerable independence: it has not been unknown for articles in different sections of the paper to express significantly divergent views. Moreover, though the tradition of anonymity may seem to encourage a certain homogeneity of tone, in practice it has allowed for both argument and co-operation among ...”

“... to the theme of free trade, and c) deterred a speedy and rational response to a danger of as yet unknown proportions. A normal PM would have muttered, ‘Oh yes, I see what you mean,’ and cut it out. But this is not a normal prime minister.A month later, Johnson was still boasting about shaking hands with all and sundry. It was seven weeks to the day from ...”

“... guard. The soldier supposedly acted alone, but whether he was part of a larger conspiracy remains unknown. The novel’s version of the assassination follows a not terribly well-sourced theory – put forward in an essay by the Dominican poet and politician Tony Raful Tejada – that it was a hit ordered by President Trujillo from Santo Domingo. Implausible ...”

“... land could either retreat deeper into the jungle or escape, as many did, on rafts downriver, into unknown territory. Many of those who remained were coerced into working on the Perené Colony. They were beaten and maltreated by the ‘corporals’ who acted as overseers. Cattle were turned loose to destroy the small areas where they were permitted to plant ...”