“... times much of the south, which was more urbanised, spoke Sumerian, a language whose affinities are unknown. From time to time the idea resurfaces that Sumerian is related to the Dravidian languages of India, although people in Turkey and Japan have sometimes convinced themselves that they, too, are part of the picture. Since much of Mesopotamian ...”

“... the Guardian: Flanders poppy no trial variant. Does my bad breath offend you? Pick a name of the unknown ypres master l as alias. Abandoned mark iv tanks, rostered by sex, Marlbrough s’en va-t-en . . . frozen mud wrestlers entertaining the Jocks. Arrest yourself: for grief of no known cause, excuse me. A superflux among bit players l which happens to be ...”

“... lengthy lectures on the nature of matter (‘Lifelessness is only a disguise behind which hide unknown forms of life’); he also assumes the attributes of a cockroach, a fox (‘in permanent contact with the unseen world of mouseholes, dark corners, chimney vents and dusty spaces under the floor’) and an astronomer who uses the chimney-piece to discover ...”

“... was one of the revelations of the first volume of Hilary Spurling’s pioneering biography: The Unknown Matisse. For more than twenty years, the Humberts were a major force in the social and political life of the Third Republic, until, in 1902, their legendary wealth was exposed as a hoax. The famous Humbert strongbox, which was supposed to contain a ...”

“... the ordinary; a newspaper advert offering for sale a hatbox of old letters generates a poem to the unknown lady who wrote them, and a Sears, Roebuck catalogue entry an ode to a dressmaker’s dummy. Something of the faux-naif hovers above his diction, as it does Bishop’s, especially in poems that work up a single conceit, such as ‘On the Death of Friends ...”

“... I had to wait more than a decade before my next visit, and that was only because ‘persons unknown’ had blown up the plane carrying General Zia, his crony General Akhtar Rehman, the US Ambassador and the Ambassador’s dog. I had returned on many occasions since then, but never to speak in public – until Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physicist, civil ...”

“... to evening wear and bonnets were retrimmed for everyday. Elaborate veils and trains were unknown. As wedding dresses kept pace with broader fashion trends, the exhibition’s chronological arrangement shows waists rising and falling, hips and busts expanding and contracting. Once the dress became a separate genus, however, its relationship to fashion ...”

“... curiosity. Quite ordinary pictures of known places give pleasure in a way better ones of unknown places do not. Ruskin Spear’s Sickert-like picture of deckchair, shingle and sea, which is a minor painting, is an excellent stimulant to memory. Among the Victorian paintings are a couple by Alma-Tadema which, as Sickert put it, show what a cultured ...”

“... Antonia Vanderbrocht and Petronila Valdearenas. The distressed man on the far right is unknown – perhaps one of the court painters who, Goya reported, were incapable of the work he himself is seen doing here.These identifications are helpful. Few painters make you as curious as Goya does about the people he painted. To look at the picture is to ...”

“... his case and relieves the News of the World of £200,000. The fate of possible perjurors is still unknown, but it will be some time before the country is so riveted by a trial, one that has seemed, in the battle of its language if nothing else, to describe some important new contours of public and private life in Scotland. Sheridan took a stand against the ...”

“... political earthquake can justly be compared, the new group which inherited power was virtually unknown outside the country. Who, before 1978, had heard of the Ayatollah Khomeini – or even knew what an ayatollah was? But more remarkable than the personalities of the leaders was the fact that this revolution – the first since the 17th century – was ...”

“... for Mailer, and might have made one for Dostoevsky. But it is also a treacherous subject. Its unknown quantities – which include an under-examined Northern social background – afford all too much scope for invention. To reverse the expression used by ‘James Hogg’, they are all too impressive to the imagination. Talented writers have been drawn to ...”

“... Corinthians, it was once said, worshipped at the tomb of the unknown god. Liberals worship at the tomb of the unknown principle; they’d be prepared to die for their beliefs, if only they knew what they were. Nowadays the creed, at least among political philosophers, recalls the fate of the Old Left: implacable certitude combined with smithereened factionalism ...”

“... possession in the name of King George III; and if it didn’t, to plant the flag on whatever still unknown lands were encountered in the circumnavigation.The Royal Society would organise the astronomy, securing a grant from the king to pay for it; the navy would be responsible for the ship, commander, crew, stores and victualling. The vessel was the bark ...”

“... in the Middle Ages is depicted here as the site of a ‘global’ culture whose history is largely unknown in the popular imagination of the West, though it can be tracked in the vocabularies of world languages, for example in words like sugar and adobe. In Ghosh’s other books the modern history of global politics is seen from the periphery, and from below ...”