“... low origins of Maggs’s aspiring master, Mr Buckle, a fish frier who has come into money. (It is unknown to the OED, which, however, understands ‘Trafalgar chair’ in something like the same sense, rather vulgar furniture bearing mementoes of the battle.) There is quite a lot of contemporary slang, here not glossed, so you have to guess that a ...”

“... force of more than a thousand American troops and their local auxiliaries. Eight Americans and an unknown number of ‘AQT’ – between 40 and 500, depending on who you believe – died. But the fighting was tough and US planners clearly felt that, should something similar happen again, it would be useful, politically and militarily, to have some Brits ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of the Gaza settlers when the evacuation begins – scarcely civil war, but a threat of rebellion unknown since the sinking in 1948 of the Altalena, the right-wing arms ship, on Ben Gurion’s orders. For his (belatedly) uncompromising stand on Gaza, Ariel Sharon, until recently a hate figure for Israeli liberals, is now called a ‘Mapainik’ – a ...”

“... the equation are a few constants – the corpse, perhaps the time and cause of death – and a few unknown quantities. The detective isolates y and z by means of some rigorous and attentive sleuthing, and is then able, with a little lateral thinking, to deduce x: the identity of the murderer. Take, by way of concrete illustration, Michael Innes’s Death at ...”

“... in the hope of averting her daughter’s expulsion. The exact motive for Lena’s arson is unknown, although it may be a protest at her husband Bob’s recent and untimely death. Understanding the importance of making a good impression, Ella brings a ‘strategic’ box of See’s candy for Mrs Lowenstein and wears a pair of bone-coloured Italian ...”

“... more diaries existed, recording the experiences and thoughts of thousands of people, most of them unknown. And then in the early 1990s Jochen Hellbeck, a young student at Columbia University, went to do research in Moscow. The Soviet Union was changing every day, as new newspapers appeared, archives and documents were declassified, and the country experienced ...”

“... 1600 and 1900 are likely to encounter in Newham’s book many monuments that were previously unknown to them. The character and quality of the monuments Newham selects differ only in their relative obscurity from those in the great cathedrals, college chapels and town churches. Among the latter, Bath Abbey, exceptional for the quantity and variety of its ...”

“... how many people are smiling in the images on display. In a picture from 1949-50, taken by an unknown photographer, sharply dressed men and women beam at the camera. It could be a wedding or a birthday party (and perhaps it is) but the subjects are members of the anti-fascist 43 Group, a network of Jewish ex-servicemen and others who campaigned against ...”

“... who survive in the liminal spaces our instincts tell us to flee.Again and again the concept of the unknown is embodied in darkness or the sea, out of which emerges something that may seem alien but ultimately proves sympathetic, like the horseshoe crab. In ‘Waterfall near Corchiano: pen and wash’, watching an artist draw a waterfall is like watching a ...”

“... was becoming so fashionable that Sartre had to hire a secretary. No longer a beginner, no longer unknown, Beauvoir had nothing to prove; she could write about anything. She decided to write about herself. She was inspired by Michel Leiris’s Manhood, which had just been reissued in Paris with a new introduction comparing writing to bullfighting (the torero ...”

“... form. According to Marías, no other type of narrative can do as much justice to the unrealised or unknown and therefore invisible part of life. ‘The genre of the novel’, he argues, is uniquely able to show ‘that what was is also of a piece with what was not’. It goes without saying that what never happened is available only to reflection, not to ...”

“... retrospectively or otherwise. But it’s harder still to believe that Lambert’s actions were unknown to senior officers, his handler at the very least. Lambert led two lives. In one, he was a policeman with a wife and children in suburban Herefordshire. In the other, he was an activist in London involved in multiple long-term sexual ...”

“... disease. But the fact is that weak health systems, not unprecedented virulence or a previously unknown mode of transmission, are to blame for Ebola’s rapid spread. Weak health systems are also to blame for the high case-fatality rates in the current pandemic, which is caused by the Zaire strain of the virus. The obverse of this fact – and it is a fact ...”

“... Grimani. Whether he commissioned them from Bosch – whether Bosch ever went to Italy – is unknown. They could have been bought on the open market: Bosch soon became an international property. What the panels depicted was clear, or roughly so (with the accent on roughly). One connoisseur in the 1520s, visiting the cardinal’s collection, produced the ...”