“... might have something to do with his imaginings, which ‘bodied forth the forms of things unknown’, giving them a shape, a name and a durable engraved image. Now imagine an animal called the Megatherium. Unless you’re a biologist of the right sort, that’s going to be harder. In all likelihood, you’ll never have seen, or even heard of, such ...”

“... music down, and created its iciness and Gothic grandeur. On Joy Division’s debut album, Unknown Pleasures, you can hear the space in the music, dragging the listener in. Joy Division didn’t last long. They made two studio albums, played 120 gigs and came to an abrupt end on Sunday, 18 May 1980, when Ian Curtis killed himself. He’d been up all ...”

“... facilitated by organisations critical of the Soviet regime, have an unexpected antecedent. In Dear Unknown Friend, Alexis Peri takes us back to the 1940s and 1950s to uncover an earlier history of letter-writing across the Cold War division. The epistolary friendships she traces were not illicit, but arranged and encouraged by Soviet state institutions, and ...”

“... notice)? Some nook of Dante’s Hell waits toasty-warm for them, no doubt, but meanwhile for the unknown hero it’s a case of ‘smile, boys, that’s the style!’ Ever thus . . . Neddy lets his Poetry Gazette flop to the floor. Flashing teeth, he’ll show them yet. One last swig, and he rests his mug with an untidy clunk and teaspoon jitter. The clock ...”

“... the sentimentality, of the work lay in its attempt to show the sheer fact of the uniqueness of unknown people, an individuality without identity, something akin to Agamben’s ‘bare life’. Boltanski doesn’t use photographs any more, but there are less direct ways to evoke this ungraspable individuality. Old clothes have long been a favourite material ...”

“... brings no suggestion of influence; the impression is rather of tales from travellers who, unknown to each other, visited the same country. There is comfort in proof that this sort of resonance between traditions is still possible. It must arise from a particular apprehension of place. There is little or nothing in the means used – the controlled ...”

“... end intended its cause to be discovered. A lingering death caused by a painful poison unknown to science sends out a powerful message. But not as strong as one caused by radioactivity. Nuclear fear is deeply etched into our souls. It is doubtful whether Cobra, the cabinet committee for co-ordinating crisis management, would have met several times ...”

“... scenes or people that change as one fraction of a second follows another, views always there but unknown before it was possible to freeze them with a camera shutter, that gives Richter’s portraits from the 1960s – the later ones are much more ‘composed’ – their particular quality. Mother and Daughter (B) (1965) shows two women walking towards ...”

“... interview called La passione sospesa, came out with a tiny Italian press in 1989 and was unknown in France until it was translated in 2013. It now appears in English as Suspended Passion (Seagull, £17) and it shows Duras at her most scrutable. Marguerite Donnadieu was born in 1914 in Gia Dinh, French Indochina, to a teacher mother and civil servant ...”

“... a few strictly controlled exceptions for business, government and education. The outside world was unknown, beyond the American military bases and what could be glimpsed on television. As soon as the country opened up, young Koreans hurried abroad to see what was happening elsewhere. Now the world is looking at ...”

“... in late 1598 or 1599. An alternative tradition, taking into account the unlikeliness of the unknown Guido being able to visit her in the Corte Sevella prison, says it was based on a glimpse the artist had of her in the street as she went to her death. Shelley saw it in 1818, in the Palazzo Colunna in Rome, and described the face as ‘one of the ...”

“... 90 per cent of the victims were black. There were other lynchings, of course: mobs murdered an unknown number of Mexicans – in the thousands – by hanging, burning and shooting, particularly in the south-western states. Foreigners were often victims. In 1891 a huge mob lynched 11 Italian Americans in New Orleans because some of them had been acquitted ...”

“... that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic.’ The fabular motif – ‘conjured’ – and stress on both pleasure and productive distance are typical. Each story concerns an individual in a state of unnatural division or ...”

“... Randolph Henry Ash in a copy of one of Ash’s books in the London Library. The letters address an unknown lady; they are suggestive of intellectual, and perhaps other kinds of passion; and Roland, from motives obscure to himself but none the less compelling, steals them. He does not tell Blackadder; he does not tell Val, the woman with whom he damply and ...”

“... Richardson seems destined to remain what Ford Maddox Ford once called her – an ‘abominably unknown contemporary writer’. Many factors have contributed to her anomalous position in literary history, but these letters underscore the significance of her rejection of a literary life and her refusal to foster a public image. Although she had acquaintances ...”