“... could entertain the concept of objective reporting is highly dubious. Ehrenburg is today all but unknown among people younger than fifty, yet there was a time when his name figured alongside that of Stalin (to his immense peril) in the Western press. He was the quintessential pisseur de copie, and wrote from morning to night, churning out millions of ...”

“... what are they up to, also sitting alone, making or remaking worlds that are not present, for unknown readers to step into? Solitary writers, solitary readers, unsocialised, silent, engaging with each other by means of the page. It is, when you come to think of it, a bit creepy – a relationship of intense absence. The external observer’s fear is of a ...”

“... own personality is only a ridiculous and aimless masquerade of something hopelessly unknown’). For no writer has ever written so tirelessly about the agonies of writing: ‘I feel like a man who can’t move, in a dream. To move is vital – it’s salvation – and I can’t!’ he writes, impressively, to Garnett. And a month later he tells ...”

“... lunch and later in a festive tea. Altogether a delightful occasion, an excursion into territory as unknown to me as if it had been Tierra del Fuego. We spent a couple of nights at Rainhill, yet another local authority in the district and famous for the locomotive trials in 1830. There is also a Roman Catholic church without windows which I failed to visit ...”

“... along with suitcases? I suppose the answer is to stay at home. Devon and Cornwall were almost unknown country to me, which is slightly shame-making. Plymouth has an attractive position and a character all its own, provided by centuries of the Navy, which still dominates Plymouth though it has now few ships. Dominant personality is still Lady Astor, with ...”

“... of herpes. The reality is much less alarming. Herpes is not a new, or recently discovered, or unknown disease, nor is it sweeping through the populations of Europe and North America like one of the plagues of Egypt. In Britain it is one of the less common of the sexually-transmitted dieseases – between ten and 12 thousand patients with herpes are seen ...”

“... not a dachshund, you’re a slipper, a moccasin with a gaping sole, shabby with use. A certain Unknown Being puts you on his left foot and shuffles across the floor. But for the most part the writing is unpleasantly barrel-chested. The poems lose by having valorous lines promoted to choruses: ‘Man lives by sky alone’ is repeated five times in ...”

“... the Great Move of 1902, when he led his band of 150 craftsmen from the East End of London to an unknown land, Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. In the picturesque and then half-decaying little town he envisaged workshops and kitchen gardens for his cabinet-makers, jewellers, blacksmiths, weavers and printers. He had already written an inspirational book ...”

“... Simpson’s own way of alluding to without committing the vulgarity of telling a story: shadowy, unknown figures (including, tactfully, himself) are seen to do this and that. Occasionally, but much less than in the more Whitmanesque exploration of his American subject in the past, he offers a reflection on life: Yet nothing in nature changes, from that day ...”

“... Like the scientist, with whom he had much in common (and was often identical), the explorer of the unknown areas of the globe was determined to describe or portray the tangible external reality instead of treating nature as a playground for his emotions. Similarly a child of 17th-century empiricism, the travel writer was at his most comfortable with the ...”

“... farmers through their compulsory marketing schemes, achieving a measure of control and discipline unknown in England. At least one blot was removed from the fair name of Ulster: its exports of eggs and bacon ceased to excite the contempt of the housewives of England. But how much more might have been done but for the moral cowardice of politicians and the ...”

“... of an analogous sort.’ Or Mach in 1895: ‘The disclosure of new provinces of facts before unknown can only be brought about by accidental circumstances … From the teeming, swelling host of fancies which a free and high-flown imagination calls forth, suddenly that particular form arises to the light which harmonises perfectly with the ruling ...”

“... in the material sense, more to give. When Nabokov arrived in New York in 1940 he was virtually unknown outside émigré Russian circles, but Wilson had been for years an important critical voice, and had a well-deserved reputation as a defender and expositor of new writing. Axel’s Castle had long been famous; To the Finland Station appeared in ...”

“... in his objectivity: I find that I cannot reasonably believe any of his descriptions of persons unknown to me, and his history is written largely in terms of personalities as causes. The least unconvincing, and the most interesting, section of the book seems to me to be the account of Franco’s policies in ...”

“... explain why Leskov, a writer with claims to be regarded as Tolstoy’s or Dostoevsky’s equal, is unknown outside Russia. Here, however, the dialogue is not so specifically Russian as to be untranslatable: that, perhaps, is the weakness of the story, in that the situation could be that of a Molière play or a Wodehouse novel. Ignat Avsey’s ear is usually ...”