“... viewer): the story might make us wonder whether such an existential gesture is enough. Jardie’s anonymous sacrifice raises questions that are central to Binet’s novel. Hannah Arendt returned several times to the Hellenic idea of the ‘shining deed’, an act that would grant a kind of immortality to the otherwise vanishing actor, in a world where only ...”

“... victims include a stoner student who gets shot and a frightened office worker who’s being sent anonymous emails accusing him of paedophilia – ‘I bet fifty quid if we grabbed his home computer we’d get a stash of little girl pics,’ Child says. Hawthorn is gay and Child is black, but this isn’t a sign that Ridgway’s version of the Met is ...”

“... of his authors. What he was not was a gifted writer. Walter Scott, ‘The Great Unknown’ of the anonymous Waverley novels, was known to the point of dedication by many Scots, who did not mind that he had no taste (as an Episcopalian) for the national religion, or for clergymen, that he was an enthusiast for birth and breeding, and that he hated the Reform ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Iweala’s short, intense and ambitious first novel, is a rebel soldier in a civil war in an anonymous African country. He has no sense of the cause he is fighting for, or even who his leaders are, beyond his immediate superiors, men he knows only as Commandant and Luftenant. He spends his days ‘walking and fighting and soldiering and ...”

“... The traditional philosophers, Aristotelians, the Schoolmen, were content with mystery. In 1638 an anonymous speaker at the Bureau d’Adresse offers this version in a debate on the causes of tidal motion:Just as it would be fruitless to wonder what the cause of a horse’s motion is, given that even the most ignorant people recognise that it comes from the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Biographer’, who is recording the war on a prototype cine-camera: although he remains anonymous, he must be W.K.-L. Dickson, the pioneering filmmaker – Foden’s failure to name him may have something to do with the fact that he has an intimately described homosexual relationship with a soldier. To these men, and a subsidiary cast that includes ...”

“... by a hodgepodge of new developments. The town is ‘everywhere and nowhere’; it is ‘perfectly anonymous’. The unnamed – and unlovely – Irish town at the centre of Sansom’s spirited and generous first novel owes something to his relocation. Ring Road’s entertaining preface denies the debt – ‘the town is not meant to be a replica of any ...”

“... causes. There is further evidence of foul play, however. Seldom reveals that he has received an anonymous note consisting of Mrs Eagleton’s address, her time of death, a ‘neatly drawn circle’, and the announcement that this is ‘the first of the series’: the killer is apparently challenging him to a battle of wits. Brought together at the scene of ...”