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“... is a relic of rioting by Muslim mobs who had tried to torch the bar, their petrol supplied by unknown fixers in a ‘dim Mercedes’. As a footnote explains, in Nigeria the Mercedes is a ‘talismanic’ symbol of local Big Men. In 1993 these men were busy organising ‘spontaneous riots’ – against Abiola’s supporters, non-Muslims, opponents of all ...”

“... neither he nor Micòl has any notion of just how little time she has, along with the thousands of unknown Italian Jews who will accompany her to a hideous death. In the novel’s epilogue the narrator tells us that the story of his relationship with Micòl ends with the last glimpse he has of her in the cortège following her brother’s corpse to the family ...”

“... in the plate-tectonic dance). In the process, Fortey and his colleagues revealed a previously unknown ancient sea and struck a blow against those geologists who had put their faith in the magnetic evidence according to which this water should not have existed. In his enjoyable new book, Fortey surveys the current state of knowledge about the Earth, and ...”

“... say, or Mum out shopping, I imagine less speed and more caution at the edges, due to the unknown in the halo of things. The huge effort of invention, or recollection, or both, with which a collective life is animated is Richler’s triumph in these books. With the close focus of a child she has gathered up the details and digressions which add up to ...”

“... name. Amélie Lang was on her birth certificate – her mother was Clara Lang, her father’s name unknown. For a time she called herself Fernande Belvallé. It was not clear when she became Fernande Olivier – perhaps when she left her husband, Paul-Emile Percheron, in 1900. She had met him the previous year when she was 17. She disliked his swarthy looks ...”

“... 1961 by Jean-Pierre Richard, under the title Pour un Tombeau d’Anatole, they revealed a largely unknown side of Mallarmé, one which even now disturbs the idea of him as the poet of pristine impersonality and detachment. My translation here is based on Bertrand Marchal’s 1998 Pléiade edition of Mallarmé’s Oeuvres complètes. These notes provide a ...”

“... indeed, ‘Look at me.’ And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory. What Brookner’s projected novelist has to say here sounds a different kind of contemporary note. The ...”

“... has such standing. Ministers have no power bases within the party or the country and are largely unknown to the electorate. They owe their places in the cabinet almost entirely to their relationship with Blair. As far as can be seen by an outsider, the cabinet is largely marginalised. It has no collective spirit, is rarely consulted by the prime ...”

“... is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other ...”

“... years the dunes collapsed, the vegetation vanished. Now Orkney is a windy place, storms are not unknown, but the interim archaeological report on the site called this sustained erosion ‘exceptional and unprecedented’. It’s happening everywhere. With the sand and vegetation scoured away, a surface was exposed which was recognised as an extensive ...”

“... we found an expression for the inexpressible and finally skirted the difficulty of the unknown by wrapping it up in a single phrase so that we wouldn’t have to give it our full attention’. ‘Je ne sais quoi’ is not a translation of ‘I know not what’: it’s a shifting of responsibility. If we really knew what we don’t know, we’d say ...”

“... by colourful borders of rinceaux, acanthus leaves, peacocks, dragons and the crest of the (unknown) patron. This Bible is one of several Hebrew texts illuminated by artists who were probably Christian, the most famous being the Golden Haggadah in the British Library. Also in this section is Juan Vespucci’s World Map of 1526, an ornate copy of the ...”

“... absurdity of Lee’s plotting, which details the amorous misfortunes of Mary’s hitherto unknown twin daughters Ellinor and Matilda, who are suggestively raised in a secret cavern directly beneath Elizabeth’s court from which they periodically emerge to become fatally involved with a series of the jealous Queen’s favourites. At the same time she ...”

“... woman for whom I have any passionate feeling’. It is, as he admits, ‘the attraction of the unknown’, and it makes him come alive in the present. But ‘marriage would be unthinkable: one does not go to Sydenham for wives.’ At the beginning of the narrative he has married Jane, a lady better suited to the style of the house than the personality of ...”

“... most wonderful. Here he was, in beauty softly embedded, feeling with all his senses a previously unknown territory which he was to explore and conquer later.’ At the bottom of the page, in minute letters, as though intended to remain invisible, Andrew has set down Jocasta’s lines from King Oedipus: ‘Fear not thy mother’s marriage bed/For many a man ...”