“... transformation begun in October 1917 in Petrograd, and the American leap into the technological unknown, embodied in the Ford factories of Detroit as much as the skyscrapers of New York and Chicago. The protagonists were interlinked rival groups of designers and thinkers who interpreted these ‘new worlds’ in varying ways. Building a New World is the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... at the bottom of a valley, sharply separated from its lighter surroundings and maintained by some unknown physical process. This lake at the bottom of the sea forcefully evoked the idea of an inner nature of things, normally hidden by an opaque veil and only occasionally discernible by the senses. It has remained with me as a moment of ultra-clear vision, an ...”

“... than itself which contains it and makes it possible, and its consequent orientation toward an unknown future. For Blumenberg, the Romantic attempt to discredit the Enlightenment, and the continuation of this attempt by Nietzsche and Heidegger, confuse a justified criticism of the Enlightenment’s attempt at ‘self-foundation’ with an unjustified ...”

“... and strange not that long ago, it turns out: it is not known who proposed the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, and many were doubtful about the prospect (not British enough, or Protestant). But the process went ahead, with much ritual: bags of bones from four unidentified victims of the battlefield were placed on a table; then, at ...”

“... decided he needed ‘a bait’ of it: Everybody in South Carolina knew that blacks, for reasons unknown, fancied clay … The eating took place in a bedroom, for the galvanised bucket of clay was kept under the bed, for the cool. It was blue clay from a creek, the consistency of slightly gritty ice cream. It lay smooth and delicious-looking in its pail of ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Jessica, known as Decca, is the communist. Pamela, once satirised in Private Eye as ‘Doreen: the unknown Mitford sister’, was the only one never to make international news, her lesbianism causing no more than a local disturbance. They were all monsters, sacred monsters at times, but monstrous nonetheless in the sheer scale of their lives and characters and ...”

“... above all, a tale of unrequited love. The book is an ode to Johnny Weissmuller, a letter from an unknown chimpanzee. Johnny moves in another element, like a swimmer into cleanness leaping. He learned his characteristic head-held-high breaststroke as a boy swimming outside in Chicago, keeping his chin up to avoid the shit floating in the river. Film ...”

“... panic. Only experience reassures me that this encounter with my own ignorance – with the unknown – is my chosen and particular task, and provided I can make the required effort the rewards may reach the unimaginable. It is as though there is an eye at the end of my pencil, which tries, independently of my personal general-purpose eye, to penetrate ...”

“... and equally ambitious. Yet unlike the energetic Mrs Beeton, the author of Le Ménagier de Paris is unknown and unknowable. He adopts the voice of ‘Husband’, addressing his ‘Young Wife’ and offering moral guidance, advice on hospitality and food and several cautionary tales, told in styles ranging from terse prose to poetry, as well as treatises on ...”

“... what he called ‘the fifth dimension’: a mix of moral philosophy, humility in the face of the unknown, Wellsian science and hedging his bets. I went to Shrewton because I miss him and it was one way of carrying on our talks, but I was also prompted by reading the Victoria County History of Wiltshire, which reveals that on Census Sunday 1851, 350 ...”

“... Galen into his service. But hopes of an action sequence are quickly disappointed. Galen, for unknown reasons, declined to accompany the emperor; he stayed in Rome attending Commodus, the emperor’s son and heir, along with other physicians, a sinecure that helped make possible his huge outpouring of prose. He recorded only one face-to-face encounter ...”

“... but the simile, back-to-front though it may be, works because it shows he considers himself in unknown and potentially dangerous territory. It’s there for our benefit, not Randeep’s. Because Sahota doesn’t explain everything straightaway, or translate the Punjabi phrases he uses, or spell out the meaning of Sikh customs and rituals, the uninformed ...”