“... a ‘form of inquiry’, Samuel wrote in the LRB of 14 June 1990, history is a ‘journey into the unknown’. These essays suggest how keenly he felt this to be true.In​ 1880 Britain could with some justification be called the ‘workshop of the world’: it produced more than 20 per cent of global industrial output and about 40 per cent of the world’s ...”

“... the black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan. But most of the Americans who attended were relatively unknown. Among them was Marilyn Nance, who was 23.Nance, who was born and grew up in public housing on the edge of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, had been thirteen at the time of the Dakar festival. Her great-grandparents had been enslaved in the American South, and her ...”

“... confirmed (in Pico’s case, through a toenail), though the identity of their murderer remains unknown. Pico died burning up with fever; bundles of unintelligible notes were found stuffed in his cabinets. He had spent the last two years of his life lashing his flesh under Savonarola’s eyes.Pico’s life touched much of what made the Renaissance the ...”

“... who knew of a young man who had fallen under his spell. At that point Tate was still relatively unknown, although he was already skilled at acquiring followers by generating a particular kind of internet pile-on. In 2017, he responded to a comic book artist who was raising money for his son’s operation by tweeting: ‘Do you feel like a failure that the ...”

“... the current secretary of commerce. A shell company owned by Vekselberg wired $500,000 for reasons unknown to a shell company owned by Michael Cohen, Trump’s attorney at the time – the same shell company which then paid the porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money.The president says: ‘Mitch McConnell is a man that knows less about Russia and ...”

“... in a corner of New York City, a vindication of his mentor, the Mafia lawyer Roy Cohn, a figure unknown to the vast majority of enthusiasts who jammed Trump’s rallies and hailed him as the authentic voice of the people.The notion of a Trump literature begins, appropriately, with an imaginary novel, 1999: Casinos of the Third Reich, contrived by Kurt ...”

“... themselves to solving only the next problem, filling in the immediately adjacent bits of the unknown. Take Concorde’s chosen cruising speed of Mach 2.2: it was just about at the safe limit of what a conventional aluminium structure could stand, in the way of atmospheric heating, so long as there were a few pieces of more resilient steel and titanium ...”

“... in person and it’s to Patrick Garland’s credit that he managed to persuade the then virtually unknown Larkin to take part in a 1965 Monitor film, which happily survives. He was interviewed, or at any rate was talked at, by Betjeman and typically, of course, it’s Larkin who comes out of it as the better performer. Like other figures on the right, Paul ...”

“... the New Philosophy of the time. Empson believed that Donne imagined lovers rejoicing in a liberty unknown under the political circumstances of the time, but available in America, and conceivably on some inhabitable planet in the newly opened-up universe. Though nobody had taken quite this line before, Donne and the New Philosophy has long been a stock ...”

“... of amends. The party continued in his hotel room, where we were joined by some girls, provenance unknown – he had a knack of surrounding himself with young women, not whores, but willing on terms to go to bed even with this hideous old man (for so he appeared to me). I went off to my room and was just going to bed when he burst in, collarless, fly ...”

“... she said slowly in French, “is very ill, right now.” ’ And she is perfectly correct. For, unknown to O’Hanlon, his companion, Lary Shaffer, professor of psychology at the State University of Plattsburgh, author of a doctoral thesis on ‘The Predation of Crabs by Lesser Black-Backed Gulls’, has multiple sclerosis. Not only that, he has recovered ...”

“... of awe and wonder. His authors began with a generous wish ‘to learn about and possibly love the unknown, the Other’; the consequence, more passionate than they had hoped, was a literature ‘splendid in the moment of its enforced engagement with the almost unthinkable Other’ – and ‘capable of fineness even in its moment of withdrawal’. The love ...”

“... of authorship are spelt out very clearly: we are shown a writer at work, trying to re-create the unknown inner life of his son, and betraying him through misrepresentation. Similarly, Susan Barton approaches Daniel Foe believing that he will set down her account of life on the island as accurately as possible, only to find that he rewrites it as a myth of ...”

“... von Richthofen. On the train which brought her to Munich Johanna had had a flirtation with an unknown passenger; and on her first meeting with Noon she invites him to bed with her. ‘ “Yes,” he said, and was surprised that his lungs had no breath.’ Noon comes quickly to feel that he is totally committed to her. It is some time before she feels an ...”

“... and phrases which are anchored in worlds we have lost. Rabelais uses more words, more new words, unknown words, words that have changed their meanings, than any other French writer. He uses these words with precision – or else in a kaleidoscope of punning imprecision. He can make you think of James Joyce – who came late to Rabelais and often uses similar ...”