“... something that has been understood by very few jewellers – is that most jewellery pieces are anonymous, even cold. A rope of Mikimoto pearls or a magnificent strand of diamonds can be given by almost anyone to almost any woman; the significance of the object lies only in its cost. Even rarity is up for grabs: there is much more manufactured rarity than ...”

“... that Tindal was known in Oxford for his ‘too great familiarity with his bedmaker’. Another anonymous reader gave a twist to Dryden’s insinuation by noting ‘alias Sh—well’ alongside the words ‘a bad Poet and Fleckno’ in Dryden’s 1680 play The Kind Keeper.Many​ of Williams’s readers have names and faces, some previously known, others ...”

“... way we have continued to treat them in the thirty generations since. A schoolboy named Dick in the anonymous Elizabethan play July and Julian complains:Men may do what they list, God wot, and so cannot we,For if I laugh my father a wanton calls me,If I be sad, my mother saith I am dumplish and surly …Both my parents and masters handle me so ...”

“... of a protected life at court would have been smart enough to imitate symptoms of idiocy. In the anonymous play Misogonus (c.1571), there is a fool character, Cacurgus, who pretends to be simple-minded in his master’s presence, talking mostly unintelligible nonsense about buttocks, then drops the act once he is alone with the audience. Somer, or a version ...”

“... New South Wales delivered the first of its many counter-blows to the cause of culture. An anonymous telephone call alerted Moses at the ABC that his friend Goossens, abroad studying opera houses, would have his luggage searched at Sydney airport, an unheard-of nosiness in those drug-free days. Moses failed to pass on the warning. Goossens’s bags ...”

“... comic are present here, notably the duality of the weak, drab man and the brilliantly coloured anonymous hero. What Babel adds is the suggestion that the superhero’s heroism has a diabolical element: to become a Red Cavalryman (if not a Scarlet Pimpernel) is to enter into a compact with the devil. Blood must be shed; geese must be sacrificed. In ...”

“... its disintegration the images became despairing. The Grand Concernments of England Ensured, an anonymous pamphlet which appeared in 1659, shows that the image of the Commonwealth as being created from a void was a current one: ‘you have made England, Scotland, Ireland, A Chaos without form and void, and I doubt your Omnipotency will never speak the word ...”

“... of a car and of its occupant seen near the farm at the relevant time. He had also been named in an anonymous telephone call. Yew Tree Farm had been burgled for its antiques. And, through his children, Spencer knew Carl Bridgewater. What happened instead was classic. The various pieces of evidence about Spencer were never properly assembled. A colleague at work ...”

“... like a collection of much shorter polemics.) Moreover, this pamphleteer and polemicist was never anonymous. Greer has always been in the business of constructing an image of herself, her very point being to make outrageous and idiosyncratic statements. Only the pre-1968 journalism might have shown us what it was possible for her to do when she wasn’t a ...”

“... said Einstein. ‘If you’ve been in the Thatcher Court, you’ll always be close to her’ is an anonymous quote – one of too many – that the author endorses. While this may have been true of a tiny band of civil servants like Charles Powell, her foreign affairs secretary, and Bernard Ingham, her press officer, and a handful of personal familiars like ...”

“... the ‘I’ in these verses can’t be identified with Patricia Beer, but only with the supposedly anonymous author of ‘Poem Found in a Modern Church’. This persona says: I long for John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes and Jeremy Taylor To preach, telling me without consultation Something I did not realise I ought to know. Very proper, once again. But why are ...”

“... modern Glasgow and the novel assumes the form of a thriller, ending with a satisfying flourish. An anonymous review in a 1986 issue of the Edinburgh Review, that usually supportive outlet for Glaswegian writers, dismissed MacDougall, on the basis of his short story collection Elvis is Dead, as ‘decidedly a minor writer of fiction’. He is clearly anything ...”

“... are distinguished by their expertise, not their exceptional personal virtue, and there is an anonymous quality to most scientific knowledge. Shapin, argues, however, that, within the scientific community, personal credibility and face-to-face interaction (for example, at conferences) remain important. He speculates that in every field there are ...”

“... more than a million objects in the 1941-2 season. Black marketeers, dealers of all nationalities, anonymous French collectors, all wanted a piece of the action. Goering came to Paris and bought truck loads of paintings and sculpture. So did Hans Frank, Albert Speer and Hitler himself. The art market in New York, too, was boosted by European exiles. Nicholas ...”

“... and Buddhist art, the beautiful had value only in so far as it embodied a religious idea which anonymous artists, renouncing any notion of self-expression or reputation, brought to their work through the practice of yoga. The Buddhist stupa or Hindu temple image, then, was designed to recreate for the spectator the same visionary connection with his ...”