“... by science fiction writers, and Cohen and Stewart provide their own short SF story about how an unknown creature might perceive a Nasa probe sent in the near future to Europa, a satellite of Jupiter. (There are great hopes that life might be found in the ocean that is believed to lie beneath its frozen surface.) They also dot their text with plot summaries ...”

“... different face, more than ten years later. How it would have looked when he painted it is another unknown: her currently crepuscular aspect is the result of several centuries of protective varnish, tinged yellowish by oxidisation. As early as 1625, a viewer complained of the picture being ‘so damaged by a certain varnish that one cannot make it out very ...”

“... in his Novum Organum, ‘the force, effect, and consequence’ of three inventions which were unknown to the ancients, ‘namely, printing, gunpowder and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world.’ Since Bacon’s time almost everyone has agreed that the social and cultural impact of printing must have been ...”

“... one NSA official said, ‘to show how good we are at it.’ To counter a threat that is ominously unknown by vesting more powers in an Agency that is itself largely unknown is politically expedient, but as the NSA’s glacially slow declassification of its files shows, a monopoly on security only breeds further ...”

“... his modest oeuvre – 35 canvases, not counting a couple of debatably attributed pieces – was unknown to the international public until Théophile Thoré, a French critic, began to collect and promote it in the mid-1860s. It offered a new version of the homely Dutch art invoked by mid-19th-century novelists such as George Eliot, who made her famous ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”