“... at which he awaits both a terrible death and damnation; but just as there is no death (except of anonymous others) for the text, so there is no damnation. In the end the stakes for Ian Wharton’s soul are just too damned low. Burrough’s great tetralogy is one precursor of this novel, but an even more obvious ancestor is Martin Amis’s Money. Both the ...”

“... Roy’s Introduction lucidly identifies and situates his text. The Chin P’ing Mei consists of an anonymous manuscript of 100 chapters, of which this volume, subtitled ‘The Gathering’, represents the initial 20. Roy’s will be the first complete, annotated edition in English. Four companion volumes, presumably of similarly mammoth proportions, will ...”

“... training today and so few have the opportunity to build anything more significant than an anonymous office block or house, whose form will be determined almost entirely by the technological constraints of mass-produced materials and conveniences (elevator, climate control), and by the political constraints of planning and safety codes. The turn to ...”

“... Austin Woolrych’s book concerns a world of high politics where the provinces exist only as an anonymous public opinion and impinge only in the form of infrequent petitions. It is a narrative of the year 1653, which witnessed within eight months the expulsion of the Rump Parliament, the convention and collapse of Barebone’s Parliament and the institution ...”

“... set off by the incongruous saloon setting and the contrasting character of an irritably attentive, anonymous narrator. ‘Citizen’ is narrated by a shrewd, very vigorous and intelligent father who can never quite grasp the paralysing effect his strength has on his artistic daughter. In ‘Many are disappointed’ what might have been a merely pathetic sketch ...”

“... pointing towards the crowd. Because his pictures work in abstract terms, they do not seem to turn anonymous strangers into symbols of peasant virtue, mother love, the pity of war, and so on; the public faces in his pictures are similarly freed from the need to be icons of greatness. In all his best pictures there is a sense of discovery. But the significance ...”

“... of his book are, he has undoubtedly changed a great deal, and common humanity makes us wish him an anonymous future far from his fans in the media. Biggs, one feels confident, will land on his toes no matter what dumb moves his brain conjures up (interesting to imagine him and Boyle sharing a cell, the one raging to kill, the other a bit fed up). What can we ...”

“... the characteristic city of the 20th century – created new classes of people, strangers living in anonymous propinquity, for whom appearances, trusting appearances, not going by appearances and keeping up appearances, were of immense importance. These cities of strangers developed a whole culture based upon looking and innovation and consumption, the culture ...”

“... Although he ascribes no date to events in the novel, the Preservatives are in opposition. The anonymous government party, albeit in a lapsed state, still proclaims itself the champion of organised labour. BHM, a minor nationalised company, has been faring badly. The workers are threatening to strike. Meanwhile the Prime Minister, a detached but avuncular ...”

“... of characters in history, allowing them a proper dignity, yet ensuring that they remain physically anonymous. Angela Carter comes nearest of all to easy affection and one accepts her independent and eccentric father, to whom she refers as ‘the old man’, as recognisable, possibly because she has written about him so well before or possibly because he might ...”

“... in 1590: but they turned out to be his own. Caspar von Barth in 1607 attributed to Gallus the anonymous poem ‘Ciris’, and so have others since: but no one ever believes it for long. The moderns have generally been more subtle in the quest for Gallus. The Roman literary world was as small as Bloomsbury; Gallus must have had great influence in it; if ...”

“... victory over Pompey’s Republic on the basis of the ancient Life? (We are told by Lucan’s anonymous biographer that ‘he turned against Nero for walking out on a recital to attend the senate; in a public loo, he farted thunderously and declaimed a half-line penned by the Emperor; he lampooned Him and those close to the throne, and finally came out as ...”

“... it? Highly unlikely. Were any of their theories incorporated into it? Maybe. The book posits an anonymous designer, whose astronomical competence was good, but not extraordinary. Citing a previous study, Jones characterises the skills required to craft it – those pin-and-slot couplings, and 188 teeth cut more or less equally into a tiny disc – as ...”

“... an angry hoof. In Rogers’s account, the suicidally brave bulldogs recall the qualities an anonymous wit once ascribed to the English soldier: ‘he has a courage matched only by his stupidity.’ Significantly, while the figure of John Bull himself possessed many admirable traits, intelligence was conspicuously not among them. Indeed, in the hands of ...”

“... only in response to the guest sliding a finger into a sensor. Nicole is unsettled by the city’s anonymous chic. Myerson comes into her own in her attention to domestic detail and the rhythms of family life, so it is a relief when the narrative returns to London and the family home: I pushed open the pine door into the kitchen and saw black gritty paw ...”